


i am on a lonely road and i am travelling (looking for the key to set me free)

by irnan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crack, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-24 00:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2560595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.”</p>
<p>Wherein Natasha Romanov has a bucket list and a metaphorical feelings-cat, joins the Victoria Hand Rescue Society Inc, and is absolutely not dating either or both of her super-soldier BFFs from the 1940s, no matter what Nick Fury thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am on a lonely road and i am travelling (looking for the key to set me free)

**Author's Note:**

> I swear this is the last time I write ot3 romcom shenanigans about Natasha's issues. I think. I hope. It's more about the shenanigans than the romcom, and very much about Natasha's issues. Spent ages and ages looking for the correct and proper title for this fic, and found it of course in Joni Mitchell, because, well. Also "Buchanan" is probably Bucky's mother's maiden name and he's either half Scottish or Ulster Scots.

She was running out of time. She could cheat by a few months and pretend she wasn’t sure exactly what her birthdate was, and indeed she wasn’t, but she’d decided years ago – with a touch of adolescent melodrama – that she would celebrate on December 21st, if celebrate you wanted to call it, and she didn’t feel too good about fudging that. Strictly speaking she was _already_ fudging it by including the year she was actually thirty in her time-limit.

Natasha suspected that six months ago she would have fudged it without a second thought if she’d had to, but on the other hand six months ago she hadn’t been running rapidly out of time and been terminally unemployable to boot. Who wanted to hire a super-spy who had a reputation for blowing up her employers and dancing (metaphorically speaking) on their graves in front of Congress, the Senate and the TV cameras of the entire world?

“Are you telling me you’re broke?” Steve asked disbelievingly.

“No,” said Natasha, “but I need to handle some issues.”

Silence on the phone line.

“…what kind of issues?”

“That I need your help with.”

Shuffle of bare feet on wooden floors. Creak of a door closing over. “If it’s a mission – Nat, anything you need, but Bucky –“

“Bring him along if he wants,” said Natasha. “I’ll text you the coordinates. Leave the shield and come in civvies.”

Three days later she met them at the Coney Island subway station, licking cotton candy off her fingertips as they came up to her. She was wearing a sundress and ballerinas and a pair of wraparound sunglasses with a pale blue frame. Never in her life had she left her apartment having willingly dressed like this. Her legs were bare, but she hadn’t been able to leave behind the knives strapped to her thigh.

“What on earth,” said Steve.

Natasha offered him some cotton candy. “I’ve never been on a rollercoaster,” she said. “Or just generally to any kind of a fun park.”

“So it’s not in fact a mission,” said Barnes.

“Not as such. Not the kind where we all run around in Kevlar and shoot at people. It’s a personal mission.”

“You’re totally confusing me,” said Steve, but he was fishing his wallet out of his pocket and eyeing up the cotton candy stand as he said it.

“I have a list,” Natasha explained. “I made it years ago after I first came to the States. A list of… stuff to do before I’m thirty.”

“Stuff that would make you a Real American Girl?” said Barnes. He was quite perceptive, wasn’t he. Natasha rather considered this the height of bad manners in a man who, up until a few months ago, had not really had an independent thought in seventy years. She glared at him, but he was immune enough that he just went on stealing her cotton candy with an expression of frankly obnoxious serenity.

“And you needed us for this how come?” Steve asked.

“What’s the point of going to an amusement park on your own?” said Natasha. Honestly. “Speaking of rollercoasters, what’s the best way to make sure you don’t throw up on them? Take tablets?”

“Don’t eat cotton candy first,” said Barnes.

Later on Natasha was forced to admit that she probably should’ve listened to him.

*********

The next thing was working in a bookstore, which turned out to be a harder gig to get than she’d thought. Apparently they liked you to have references and stuff. Natasha had had a notion that the only things she would need were good manners and an extensive knowledge of the literary canon, but this impression had proved misleading.

In the end she resurrected the Natalie Rushman identity and asked Pepper to write her a reference. With this she charmed the socks off the owner of a place in Williamsburg that sold rows upon rows of books she’d read and even more she hadn’t and started work a week later. Natasha dyed purple streaks into her hair and wore jeans with holes in the knees; she organised a few readings by up-and-coming authors, helped lots of hipsters choose their hipster books, stacked the stock and dusted the shelves and counted the cash register at night and re-arranged the window displays; she drank gallons of tea and talked to people endlessly about books, which was exhausting, but made her intensely happy.

Yet it was frightening to realise, in the course of an ordinary work day, how _personally_ she took books. Clint had unloaded a pile of books on her when he had first brought her to the States that she strongly suspected had been liberated from his attic, where they had languished since he’d joined the army when he was eighteen, and in reading and re-reading them in those long first months they had become oddly entwined into her very being. It was hard, now, to recommend them to someone and explain why they were so good; it was difficult to put into words why Tolstoy meant so much to her, why she loved David Gemmell, how _Jane Eyre_ had bolstered her sense of self, how fairy tales and fantasies had given her worlds upon worlds she had never dreamt could be dreamt. There were so many colours in the world that the red rooms had not permitted her to see. There were even more in books.

And one day she was expounding on recent German authors to an interested customer, literally seconds away from making a sale, when someone came up behind her and said, “You are so wrong about everything,” and Natasha spun indignantly and found herself floundering, a little, neck cricked to stare up at Bucky Barnes. He was wearing a thin leather jacket and a dark blue shirt, there was a gun holster under his left arm, he hadn’t taken his sunglasses off when he had come inside, so when Natasha turned to face him she wound up looking at herself in the reflective lenses. His mouth was slanted in a smile, teeth catching his bottom lip.

“What the hell do you even know,” she said.

“German authors write about three things, OK, Nazis, communists, and Nazis versus communists,” said Barnes. “It’s always the same book, over and over.”

“Get your sorry ass out of my shop and go read some E.T.A. Hoffmann,” said Natasha, which was cheating really because Hoffmann had died a hundred years before anyone had thought of Nazis and forty or so before Communists had become a thing.

“Never heard of him,” said Barnes.

Natasha pursed her lips. Then she said, “Wait right here, five minutes,” and turned back to her original customer. Five minutes later she went back to Barnes; two hours later, as she was closing up, they were still arguing – but he was carrying a paper bag whose seams threatened to tear under the weight of the books she had foisted on him.

He hadn’t asked her what she was doing there. As far as she could tell, his coming into the shop had been a complete coincidence.

*********

Item three: buying a motorcycle. She had never actually owned one.

“I drive the Corvette everywhere,” she said to Steve, “but hell if you can do that in New York.”

“I didn’t realise you’d moved here,” said Steve, bent over the magazines she’d brought.

“Eh,” said Natasha. Neither had she.

“What sort of thing would you want?” Steve asked. “I mean just manoeuvrable, or powerful, or what?”

“I don’t know,” said Natasha. “I like riding bikes and I want one and you ride that Harley thing and I thought it’d be easier to ask you.” And she had needed an excuse to come over and check on them. Men of all ages, no matter how sensible otherwise, liked it when good-looking young women with great racks asked them for help with things, especially things American society considered manly, like the purchase of fast-moving vehicles. This tendency in mind, Natasha had gathered up some magazines, prepared a cheerfully perplexed expression, and hopped on the subway.

“Sure you did,” said Steve, applying his attention to the magazines again. “I mean, is it OK if I give you a key to this place? Be good to see you more often. And – just so you know – Buck says he’s got a bone to pick about someone called Vanderbeke.”

“If he doesn’t like Vanderbeke he’s getting shot,” said Natasha. “Here” – she took the magazines off him and flipped through them – “this is the one I want.”

“Oh that’s a beauty,” said Steve. “I know a dealer, let me give you the address.”

*********

She asked Steve for company while she sorted out the next item on the list without attempting to analyse her decision to call him.

“I thought you already had an apartment,” he said.

“No, I have a safe house,” said Natasha. “I need a place to live.”

She didn’t know if she liked his sudden smile or not. On the one hand, Steve didn’t smile properly very often, so it was rather lovely to see it. On the other hand, she had been a little sensitive to people being patronising about poor Natashenka finally making her way in the big bad real world ever since she had told Nick about the bucket list and he had told her she was being ridiculous, she didn’t have to do this just because she was still pissed at him over DC, why wouldn’t she just call Melinda May the way he had been asking her to for weeks, was this anything to do with Rogers and Barnes, because he, Nick, trusted those self-righteous Army grunts like he trusted a viper in his bosom; they were pretty enough but she could do better, Romanov, so much better.

He was lucky the Contessa said he was high on painkillers at the time or Natasha would have put Interpol on his ass without a second thought.

But all Steve said was, “Someplace near your bookstore?”

So they went apartment-hunting. The first three were way too small. Natasha intended to buy a pile of furniture: a couch, an armchair, a dining room table, bookshelves, a California king bed, a dresser she could scatter tchotchkes on when she got some, a giant wardrobe, a shoe rack for the hall. Pictures on the walls. A full-length mirror. You know. Stuff.

“You can’t buy an apartment to fit furniture you haven’t got yet,” said Steve.

“I want space for whatever furniture I decide to get, though.”

“Colour-coded, calibrated, selected by a tasteful interior decorator?”

“Interior decorators are for douchebags.” And people who weren’t normal enough to tell if they had tastes in furniture of their own.

The fourth was too dark, the fifth too bright and exposed because the windows were so big. Any half-trained dime-store merc with a rifle could’ve found a decent position on the opposite roof. The sixth was terrible for all sorts of reasons Natasha couldn’t put her finger on but Steve described as ‘feeling haunted’. The seventh was perfect. It wasn’t far from the bookstore, it was only on the fourth floor, the windows were big but not floor-to-ceiling, the balcony was tiny but adorable, the bathroom was a decent size, the kitchen was an open-plan thingy that wasn’t walled off from the dining room, there was a grocery store round one corner and a pharmacy round the other, the subway was ten minutes’ walk away, and Natasha loved it.

“Well, I’m very glad to hear it,” said the realtor, smiling, and named a sum that made Steve grimace. Natasha, resigned from the start to dipping into her Swiss accounts, shrugged and signed on the dotted line, metaphorically speaking. She didn’t quite know what she’d done to deserve the place, but she was going to hang on to it.

“I’ll send you the contract documents within the week. Thank you very much for your custom, Mr and Mrs Rushman –“

“Oh, we’re not together,” Steve said, wandering about the kitchen.

“Ohhhh,” said the realtor, and she gave him another once-over.

Natasha shifted her weight from one foot to the other and, possessed of an imp of mischief she had not known existed in her, leaned in and whispered, “Gay best friend.”

“Oh,” said the realtor gloomily.

*********

“IKEA,” said Clint.

“IKEA?” said Natasha.

“Yeah, what, you think Bobbi and me bothered with designer furniture? We’re undercover all the damn time. The first time Bobbi’s Mom came to stay she cried at the sight of the living room.”

Bobbi’s Mom liked Clint just fine, but she absolutely did not understand him. Or Bobbi.

“Fine,” Natasha said. “IKEA it is.”

*********

“It’s like every floor is one of Dante’s circles of hell,” said Steve, staring at the floor map with wild and horrified eyes.

“Man up, Rogers,” said Natasha, swallowing hard. The floor map was a dizzy block of primary colours, marked with icons meant to show bathrooms, restaurants, staircases and elevators; each section of the shop had its own little identifying icon, and there were tape measures and little pencils and paper to write down the ID number of the item you wanted hanging on the wall next to it. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

It really was. Thank God.

“That’s part of what’s freaking me out,” said Steve. “It’s like furniture shopping as a video game. Do we have to hit every single one of these sections in order to collect enough points so they’ll let us out?”

“Have you ever actually played a video game?” Natasha was curious.

Steve grinned. “I had a bit of a Tetris addiction for a while.”

“But that’s the only one?”

“What, like you’re a Mario Kart champion?”

She put her hands on her hips. “I might be.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Buddy, anything you can do –“

“Jump tall buildings in a single bound?”

“OK,” Natasha said. “Maybe not that.”

They set off towards the living rooms.

*********

When they had staggered, shell-shocked, through the check-outs they found a snack bar waiting for them. Steve bought them both two hotdogs and a box of meatballs each; after that they had ice cream. Natasha licked a wide stripe around the top of her cone straight off and then started at the top, humming a little. It was pretty good ice cream.

Steve was staring at her, lost in thought. The distant look on his face reminded her to ask:

“Hey. I keep meaning to ask – have you been OK?”

“Hmm?” He looked startled. Then he said, “Yeah, you know.” He attacked his own ice cream as little melting rivulets made their way down the cone.

“That’s why you lick round the bottom first,” Natasha said. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

Steve laughed. “Fine. We’re fine, I mean Buck’s… a lot better. It’s hard to – to tell. The worst days are when he doesn’t want me to go away but he can’t stand to be around other people, you know. And I keep – telling him about his family was rough. Sometimes I think – almost the worst.”

Natasha kept her voice even. “I wasn’t asking about Barnes.”

He had a trick sometimes of letting his mouth hang open, a parting of his lips that lasted a second before it became a jagged little smile. He looked away. “No, no you weren’t.”

It wasn’t fair to push him. They finished their ice cream in silence, wiped sticky fingers on thin paper serviettes, and gathered up the intimidating pile of Natasha’s purchases. Getting the lot into the elevator was a delicate operation, as they were far from the only people trying to take it, but as the doors slid shut and Natasha snatched up a lamp she meant for her bedside table before it hit the ground and shattered without ever having left its packaging, Steve said, “Kind of shit, to be honest, but in a completely different way to before.”

“Guilty cause you’re glad he’s back.”

An odd shiver took hold of him, a sharply-indrawn breath. “That’s about the size of it.”

_And also run down to the ground and terrified you might lose him again_. It seemed impolite to say that in front of an elevator full of strangers, though, so Natasha held her tongue.

*********

“Do I speak _Swedish_?” said Barnes, astonished. “I don’t know. I mean I might do. Say something in Swedish.”

“I don’t fucking speak Swedish!” said Natasha, pacing around the wreckage of her new living room with the phone clamped to her ear. “How am I supposed to say something, I can’t even pronounce this, and I’m not convinced it’s actually Swedish, I think it’s mostly gibberish, like a fake language made up for marketing purposes, it’s driving me crazy, we’ve assembled this dining room table three times and every single time there’s this one little screw left over that just won’t fit and –“

“OK, OK, but the instructions –“

“THE INSTRUCTIONS ARE ALL IN FAKE FUCKING SWEDISH, THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU!”

“OK,” said James in the most reasonable voice Natasha had ever heard him employ. “OK, Natalia, take a deep breath, all right, I’m gonna come over, I’ll bring some beer, we’ll sort it out. Have you killed Steve yet or is he still breathing?”

Natasha looked over her shoulder. Steve was lying prostrate with frustration underneath the dining room table, long legs sprawled across half the room, his hands over his face. She thought he might be laughing. Typical of Steve to hide his face and be silent about it.

“Beer would help,” she said.

*********

By the time her furniture was assembled the entire apartment was knee-deep in ripped cardboard, Styrofoam and plastic packaging. Natasha sat slumped in the mess in the hall, hugging her knees against her chest with one arm and holding her beer in the other hand. In front of her, Barnes was lying in the same position Steve had been earlier, right arm crooked across his eyes. Beside her, Steve had closed his eyes and was resting his head against the wall. Outside the world was grey and muted, early-morning mist hanging in the streets. Natasha kept staring at Barnes’ red Chuck Taylors, a glaring spot of colour among the cardboard.

“Never have I ever wanted so badly to be attacked by megalomaniac Neo-Nazi terrorists,” said Natasha. Even to her own ears her voice sounded dull.

Nobody drank.

“Never have I ever wished I could still get wasted as badly as this,” said Barnes.

Steve swallowed half the bottle in one go. Barnes rolled his eyes at him.

“Never have I ever been to a baseball game,” Natasha said suddenly. It was the shoes that made her say it.

Barnes sat up so he could take a drink. Then he and Steve both looked at her.

“That at least is something I know I can fix,” said Steve.

Natasha stretched her legs a bit so her toes were poking James’ hip and leant sideways against Steve, yawning.

*********

Baseball was mostly fun because James and Steve enjoyed it. The hot dogs were terrible, the crowd was pushy and loud and stank of stale beer and sweat, the sunshine beat down mercilessly on Natasha’s head and there was absolutely no way on earth she would ever understand the actual game, none, but her idiot companions laughed and whooped and cheered and ate the terrible hot dogs with relish and did their best, bless them, to explain why this game was so important to so many people, and looking at their faces gave her an idea.

*********

One of the great things about New York was that there were hundreds of thousands of museums all over the city. Museums were the perfect set-pieces, as far as she was concerned: you had to get out of the house to go to them, it took several hours, and you always had an iron-clad excuse not to talk to each other if you needed one.

She went online and read their files again: Steve had gone to art school, James had been really good at maths and sciences; they had both gotten top marks in history but both of them had been terrible at foreign languages before the serum and their English report cards from the Catholic school they had attended contained a note from their teacher (one Sister Mary Margaret, a woman to whom Natasha’s sympathetic imagination ascribed a patient grimace and a long-suffering aspect) to the effect that Masters Barnes and Rogers appeared to have been complicit in the acquisition, consumption and distribution of certain works of supposed literature which the discerning government of the State of New York had banned for the good of its people and the health of public morals.

Typical Steve. Tell him he wasn’t allowed to do a thing and he would nod, solemnly, and go away with an innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt expression, and ten minutes later the thing in question would be done, usually with extreme prejudice and a side-order of property damage. He was the single most contrary person Natasha had ever known.

And to think she had once assumed that James Buchanan Barnes had been the sensible one.

Anyway. Art galleries: Steve. Science museums: James. History stuff, especially dinosaurs: both of them.

“Are all the museums in the state of New York on your bucket list?” Steve asked after the third weekend on which she had arranged such an outing.

“More or less,” said Natasha unblushingly. She was developing a liking for museum cafés. They were frequently small, frequently cramped, and always overpriced, but that was part of why she liked them. They tended to smell of coffee and wet raincoats, the parents were loud and the children were louder and if you hit on a particularly bad day to come you would often find your path to the only free table in the place barred by six different buggies placed in six different strategic positions; by the time you had fought your way past this barricade of small-human paraphernalia the seat you had want was usually taken, and you were left standing with your cooling coffee and your perfectly gooey chocolate cake in the middle of a sea of hostiles, looking like an idiot.

But if you were able to reach that far-flung corner table museum cafés were an excellent place to sit and people-watch, or, especially, write. _Keep a diary_ was on the bucket list; always before Natasha had viewed this idea (touted occasionally by the SHIELD-issue shrinks) as ridiculously unsafe, but she was beginning to enjoy the quiet routine of sitting down and scratching her day into the page. It still made her uneasy, especially the way the most innocuous observation could set off a chain of associations in her mind she had no desire to pursue, but she’d had a hidden safe installed in the apartment and had developed a fetish for pretty stationary, so whatever.

Steve said, “I’d say you’re up to something but I like hanging out with you too much to care.” He smiled at her.

Natasha smiled back. “I like it too.” What made Steve dangerous, she thought, was how quiet he was. He let you needle and flirt and tease for years with a shrug and a smile, and then, when you thought you knew how your partnership with him worked, he’d go and save your life when he shouldn’t and mock you for thinking he wouldn’t have.

*********

Street photography was a disaster because she and James spent more time talking than taking pictures. Steve rolled his eyes so much that Natasha was glad they had left him at home: he took it way too seriously. It didn’t help that it kept raining on and off all day, irritable drizzles as if some weather-god or other was miserable and determined to make the world share in it. She and James took shelter in an endless series of coffee shops, under grocery-store awnings and thick-foliaged trees on the sidewalk, huddling in their thin jackets and watching the passing cabs kick up sprays of water under their wheels.

“I’m gonna have a cold for weeks,” Natasha predicted.

“I’m waiting for the dye to run out of your hair,” said James. “Hey, let’s go left up here. There used to be this picture palace that had just opened when I shipped out…”

“Sure.” Natasha jumped over a puddle as they set off, did a silly little hopscotch across the uneven paving stones. The rain might be cold but the wind was warm and so strong that the clouds scudded across the sky as you watched, moving off, getting thinner, pale blue and golden light coming through for a moment and then fading again.

Falling into step beside her, James said, “It’s good of you to do this.”

Natasha laughed. “What, drag you out into the wet on a Sunday to practice the pretentious hipster dark art of street photography with a StarkPhone and a dismal lack of umbrellas? Oooooo, look at that.”

Streetlights glinting off a puddle by someone’s front tire, the glitter of the raindrops on the body and windows of the car itself, the long avenue behind it; she squatted down for a shot of the rain-drenched street stretching into the distance, smiling. When she had taken the photo she let her hands fall between her knees, still and silent. There were all sorts of beautiful things in the world if you just looked for them. If you knew to look for them, and had time… Did Nick, she wondered suddenly, see views like this? Did he notice children in art galleries, eyes glued to their favourite pictures, or the rapt faces of an audience listening to their favourite author read aloud, or know the right way to eat cheap IKEA soft ice… she stood up again, smiling, and linked her arm with James’. It was his left arm, the contours hard and heavy against her flesh.

“Thanks for coming with me,” she said.

“Thanks for asking me,” he murmured, so low she almost didn’t hear.

The picture-palace was still there; they rang Steve and got three tickets for some French arthouse comedy with dreadfully-translated subtitles. Then they went for pizza and spent the meal arguing about the greatness or otherwise of Luc Besson.

*********

Superhero comics were not nearly as fun as the real thing. Sam could fanboy Dick Grayson as much as he wanted, Natasha refused to care.

“They killed off Batman,” said Steve. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. Even if they did bring him back. I own a copy of Detective Comics #27.”

“Yeah, but he was being an asshole for two hundred issues beforehand so I feel like he had it coming,” said James. “You still have that comic book?”

“Nah, it’s in the Smithsonian,” said Steve.

“Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman,” Sam said to Natasha, leaning round the stack to flourish a trade paperback of the comic in question.

“Because I’m a girl?” Natasha crossed her arms over her chest, feeling cynical.

“Because it’s a really great run.” He thought about it. “And also a little because you’re a girl, I don’t know any girl who’s a comics fan who doesn’t like Wonder Woman. Read the Hiketeia, she punches Batman off a balcony.”

“And now I officially have a thing for Wonder Woman,” said Steve.

“You’d have a thing for any girl who can knock you on your ass,” James said, sounding fond and reminiscent.

“True,” said Steve. “I mean, like you don’t?”

Natasha refused to look at either of them.

*********

“Don’t tell me you can sew,” said Natasha.

“I can darn my own socks if that’s what you mean,” said Steve. “Bucky can sew.”

“I can _mend_ my stuff, there’s a difference,” said James. “Sew on buttons. Darn socks, as you’ve mentioned. Hem trousers, let out seams, that kinda thing.”

“Any idiot can let out a seam,” said Natasha. “You just rip the stiches out and re-sew it. Don’t you?”

“How am I supposed to know?” said Steve. “I only ever had the one growth spurt, and it was artificial.”

Natasha laughed. They were on her balcony, drinking beer in the early evening sunshine while kids played on the street and Sam tried to untangle himself from a phone conversation with his parents and – by the sound of it – six different cousins at once in the living room. Natasha had bought a knitting magazine from a newsstand yesterday, and Steve had found it and was flipping through it.

“But would you actually wear any of it if you made it?”

James said, “She might not, but you and I would probably have to.”

“I don’t know,” said Natasha. “It was just an idea, but I don’t think it’s really me. I’d have to sit still a lot.”

That made them both laugh.

“S’up,” said Sam, squeezing himself onto the balcony. “Oh man, don’t tell me you’re taking up knitting.”

“Why not?” Natasha started grinning.

“Single most boring hobby known to man,” said Sam. “My Granma knits, it’s for her peace of mind. Go learn to skateboard or something, seriously.”

Steve looked up from the magazine. James twisted round to look at Sam. Natasha said, “Hmmmmmmmmm.”

“Oh _no_ ,” said Sam.

*********

Skateboarding was _hilarious_. Everyone but Sam messed about with glee, falling off the things left right and centre and trying kickflips long before Sam said they were allowed to. Natasha crashed into James twice before he worked out she was doing it on purpose and Steve, the bastard, turned out to be a natural at it, which just made James more determined to master a railslide.

“If I’d known they were competitive assholes I would never have agreed to this,” said Sam darkly as another aerial died the death of scraped knees and yelling.

“I am not going to beaten at a fucking kids’ game by some pissant Paddy with more balls than brains,” James grated out.

“Fuck you running, Barnes, your Da was a limey,” said Steve.

“My Da was an _American_ , and you can scoff all you like but half of Brooklyn and all of bloody Belfast knows your Aunt Gail married a Unionist,” said James.

Steve gave him the finger and tried another kickflip. Sam and Natasha looked at each other.

“Probably better not,” said Natasha.

Sam nodded fervently.

*********

Going to concerts was hard to figure out. James seemed to like quick, light-hearted, old-fashioned music you could dance a jig to, spin a girl across a dance floor with her skirts floating around her knees. Sam had converted Steve to Motown with vigour and glee, and then Steve started liking disco. (Even Sam thought that was a bit much.) As for Natasha… well, it was lucky for Natasha that her boys liked a challenge. They lived in the city that never slept: there was always some genre of music playing live somewhere.

To be fair, she didn’t always make them come. She was in a small bar near Christopher Street one evening, listening to a girl a few years younger than she was croon about her ultimate heartbreak and the terribleness of life – Natasha liked her voice and liked the music, slow and jazzy, but the lyrics made her roll her eyes a little – when a boy sidled up to her, smiling.

“Isn’t she great?”

He was gangly, smooth-cheeked, wearing corduroy trousers and a t-shirt, sort of… self-consciously Seventies. But he smelt nice, and he wasn’t speaking to her tits, so he met Natasha’s criteria for ‘human being’. And he must have been her own age, but everything about the way he moved made him seem very young. (Though if you believed Sam she said that about a lot of people their own age.)

“Lovely voice,” Natasha agreed.

“Lyrics kind of feel like they need ten more years life experience behind them, though.”

She laughed. That was more or less what she’d been thinking. The boy grinned like he was glad to have amused her and leaned a little closer. “I’m Finn.”

Are you really. “Natalie.”

“Hi, Natalie.” He had a nice smile, friendly, warm. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Yes, Natalie would have said, and Natasha could see the future unspooling in front of her: Natalie Rushman would have a drink with this boy, and chat and laugh and flirt with him, and go home with him, and they would meet again and again and get to know each other better – he was… what, a graphic designer? A theatre tech? A paralegal at worst. She would tell him about her job at the bookstore and he would come and see her on Saturdays; they would cook together and go to bed together – the sex would be lovely – and she would introduce him to Steve and James and he would be a bit tongue-tied and awkward around a couple of ex-Army guys, that, or a little self-righteous. He wouldn’t know what to make of Clint or Bobbi or Nick at all. It would take him months to work out she was Natasha Romanov, if indeed he ever did. It would be… it would be a nice, quiet, normal life. Gentle, if that didn’t sound stupid. Slow-moving. In ten years’ time she might go for a week or more without remembering that her name was Natasha, and would not have fired a gun in years, much less killed another human being.

“It’s sweet of you, Finn,” she said, “but I’m spoken for.” His eyes were brown, that was the trouble. She preferred them blue: kind, clever, devious and dangerous, icy, sky-coloured.

“Oh well,” he said, “as a friend, then. You know, your hair is fantastic.”

*********

Clothes had been a problem from day one. By choice Natasha dressed simply, unobtrusively and practically; all her jackets were leather, as this afforded a minimum of protection, and her boots were sturdy and well-made. This was the uniform she felt most comfortable in, but the question was: was it the uniform she liked best?

She had no idea. When she went shopping she was careful not to buy things that matched anymore; she dragged herself away from sleek, simple t-shirts and looked for things with prints and bows and weird floating sleeves; she bought dresses, short skirts, long skirts, hot pants, leggings and boot cut jeans and an endless series of blouses, sweaters, cardigans and scarves, blazers, ballerinas, anoraks, trench coats, sneakers, shoes, stilettos.

And for this evening, a pair of leather pants and a thin sleeveless top the colour of the summer sky, loose chiffon, cut so low between her breasts she needed to be careful choosing a bra. She slid a leather jacket over the top and buckled the tiny straps on a pair of heels that did delicious things to her ass and legs, and she did her hair up and smeared lipstick on, a tiny bit smudged, and caught a cab out to James and Steve’s place.

When Steve saw her his jaw dropped.

“I know,” said Natasha. “I look ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” Steve managed.

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” James said from the kitchen doorway.

Natasha spread her arms and did a 360 turn for them. She drew a breath. “I’m going clubbing.”

Silence.

“Ooooo-kaaaaay,” Steve said slowly.

“You gonna come?”

“Uh, no.”

Natasha pouted. “Steve!”

“I really” – he kept looking at her like he couldn’t believe what she was wearing, and let’s face it, Natasha couldn’t either, missions were one thing but this! She had voluntarily dressed up like the very least convenient of all possible covers, the kind of girl men hit on as if they had a god-given right to it – “really can’t dance.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Steve, I taught you mixed martial arts in an afternoon, you think I can’t teach you to bump and grind in ten minutes? Come on, up you get.” She wandered over to the music player – thankfully futuristic – and started to scroll through their stuff.

“It took two weeks and I still have the bruises,” said Steve.

James said, “I’m pretty sure he can bump and grind just fine, Nat,” and out of the corner of her eye she saw Steve give him the finger.

“What about you?”

He laughed as he came up behind her, and his body was warm at her back when he leaned over and found the perfect song. Sharp and jangly, the Rolling Stones started up: _hot stuff, can’t get enough_ … and Natasha shimmied her hips and smiled.

“I know a place up in Soho,” James said, moving with her like it was the easiest thing in the world. Natasha wasn’t sure if she wanted to give the girl who’d taught him this a bouquet of roses or a slap in the face, both of them swaying to the beat. He was smiling, eyes firmly on her face, but his fingertips brushed her hips and waist, over and over. She took his wrists and put his hands on her, and his eyes widened a bit, softened, merry and relaxed in a way she’d seldom seen. He had such an expressive mouth: every smile was different but captivating.

“Of course you do,” said Steve, fond and exasperated.

She beckoned to him, laughing. “Don’t be a spoilsport. We’ll find something more interesting for you to wear,” and Steve said, “It’s not gonna get more interesting than that,” and gave her and James another once-over.

“Nobody who moves the way you do in a fight is gonna be a bad dancer, Steve,” Natasha said. “Trust me.”

“I do,” he said.

Sam wouldn’t speak to her for a week when she told him she didn’t have photos.

*********

They met in the park sometimes during her breaks – she and James – to read, or argue about books, or eat together and chat. There was one oak tree that Natasha particularly liked, an old and spreading one. At its trunk the grass had been worn away by countless children climbing it, countless picnickers serving lunch right underneath it. She and James lay side-by-side on the grass a little further out and stared up at the canopy of leaves above them, the glitter of the sunlight between the green, the high and lovely blue of the sky.

“D’you really love it?” he asked her once. “The bookstore? Or is it just something you want to do because you have to do something?”

Natasha smiled. “I really love it. It’s – everything’s so –“

“Normal?”

“Yeah. It’s like – don’t laugh at me, but sometimes it’s like I can feel my brain expanding. Like suddenly I have all this space to think, and to be.”

James didn’t laugh. “That’s what it’s like for me too.”

Suddenly she said, “What would you have done? If you’d gone home?”

He was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I really don’t. I wouldn’t have known then, either. All my life people have been tellin’ me I’m my Da all over again. Well, there’s no one left to do that now.” He laughed shortly. “But I never worked out what else I could be.”

She took his hand in hers. It was the left hand, and it wasn’t as responsive to gentle touches, so three or four seconds passed before he laced his fingers carefully with her own, mindful of the rills of joints and knuckles.

“There’s time,” she said quietly.

“There is.” He turned his head to look at her, smiling. She wriggled her nose at him, grinning back, and shrieked, laughing, when his right hand flashed up and tugged on it.

“Used to drive my sisters crazy.”

“You ass!” Natasha poked him in the side, laughing helplessly. “I’m _not_ your sister.”

“Not even a little,” James agreed.

*********

Back at the very beginning she had decided she needed to learn to cook.

“You must be joking,” Bobbi had said.

“But you’re an adult,” Natasha had said.

“I’m a super-spy.”

“You went undercover once at a restaurant fronting for the mob!”

“As a chef de service.”

“No food at all?”

Bobbi had considered it. “Well,” she said. “I can fry bacon.”

“Any idiot can fry bacon,” said Natasha. “I want to do soufflés and coq au vin and fancy things with sauces, and – and ordinary stuff like potatoes and vegetables and stews and things.”

“Well there must be some kind of cookery class in this city that you can join.”

This was an excellent point and Natasha had seized on it with gusto. There were in fact dozens of cookery classes in New York; the tough part was finding one that did the kind of cookery she wanted. There were a few missteps, like the Ayurveda cooking class run by a lily-white girl from Iowa who talked a lot about the mysteries of the exotic east, or the one for college kids who couldn’t boil an egg. Natasha knew how to boil an egg; she could cook pasta and rice and basic tomato-based sauces, and throwing a salad together wasn’t exactly difficult. No, it was the gap between “in possession of a basic life skill” and “good cook” that she wanted to close.

When she did find a class that suited her she signed up for a lesson a week and stockpiled cookery books on a shelf in her kitchen. The class was mostly attended by people her own age, several of whom were learning to cook because they had kids, though David Sydney was fifty-four, had just been divorced by his wife, and had never cooked a meal without use of a microwave in his life (“Maybe that’s why she divorced me,” he said glumly, which was Natasha’s suspicion also), and Kendra Jones was sixteen and decidedly fed up with her parents’ cooking (“If I never have to eat another burger again it’ll be too soon.”).

They were a fun group, on the whole, and she told them about her job at the bookstore and pretended she came from a military family, casting Clint unasked as her older brother and Bobbi as her sister-in-law, and having done so spent an inordinate amount of time fretting over how to characterise Steve and James. Brothers was out of the question. Childhood friends? Friends of Clint’s? Former colleagues? But then she would have to explain what they had worked at. Or she could try just not bringing them up in casual conversation sometime, but that was proving harder than she had thought it would. _Steve cooks this great stew with potatoes – James always shops at farmer’s markets_ – only the most inane of remarks, but a constant stream of them.

One evening she was standing out the back of the building with Jenny Morley, dragging experimentally on the first cigarette of her life when Steve called her phone. They usually texted, so she answered immediately.

“All OK?”

“Yeah, I was just about to ask you that,” he said. “You changed shifts.”

Natasha frowned at the cigarette burning between her fingers. “I changed shifts?”

“Bucky went by the shop and you weren’t there. I tried to make him call himself but he says cell phones freak him out.”

“It pisses him off that he can’t work the touchscreen with his left hand is what that means,” said Natasha, and heard James laughing in the background. “I’m at my cookery class.”

“You’re taking a cookery class? Nat’s taking a cookery class,” he said to James, and she heard him laughing even harder. He really hated cell phones and probably always would. Natasha had an idea this was because they made him feel tagged, tracked and monitored, but she had never asked.

“I’ll have you know I’m very good with a chopping knife,” said Natasha, grinning.

“I can imagine,” said Steve. “So if you haven’t eaten already, do you wanna come over and critique my casserole? Sam’s gonna be here in an hour or two.”

“Well,” said Natasha. “As long as you’re not insulted if I don’t eat much.”

“I promise,” said Steve.

“I’ll see you soon then.”

“Bye.”

She was smiling as she hung up, and Jenny grinned at her. “Hot date?”

Natasha shook her head. “No – some friends.”

“Have fun, anyway!”

“Thanks – see you next week?”

“Yeah. Till then!”

Natasha stubbed her cigarette out and dropped it in the ashtray as Jenny headed off. Phone, handbag, keys to the shop… Metro card. Hot date? She shook her head. Sam was coming, excellent. She liked Sam. Whistling to herself, she set out down the alley to the street, turned left past the main entrance and made for the subway station. It was fall already – she needed to step up a few items on her list – the leaves on the trees shone golden in the orange street lights, bars and restaurants spilling customers onto the sidewalks. The subway was crowded but quiet, and she read du Maurier on her e-reader as she walked the few blocks to Steve and James’ building from the station. The apartment smelt of wine and casserole, warm and homey after the darkened street. The wind was picking up, pushing and rattling at the window-panes. Steve’s casserole was excellent, and when Sam arrived they ate it out of pasta bowls with heavy sage dumplings and drank red wine.

“So what do you think?” said Steve to Natasha.

“I think it’s rude to fish for compliments,” she said. “Yes, please, I’d like some more.”

“Natasha is taking a cookery class,” James said to Sam.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, why is this weird?”

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Cause you’re a super-spy? What’s next, Hell’s Kitchen?”

“I’m a well-rounded human being,” Natasha countered. “Well, I’m trying.”

Sam started laughing. “Don’t tell me cooking is on the bucket list.”

“Laugh it up, flyboy,” said Natasha, levelling her fork at him. “I only bothered to come over here because I wanted to ask you about skydiving.”

There was a short silence. Steve put his cutlery down. He had a glint in his eye Natasha thought she recognised, and it made her smirk.

“Parachuting for fun,” he said.

“Oh yes.”

“Count me in.”

“None of the history books ever said you were an adrenaline junkie,” said Sam. “Why would you ask me?”

“Right, cause the guy who voluntarily signs up for a top-secret programme using experimental military technology” – “Ding!” said James – “that allows him to fly with actual wings is obviously not any kind of a thrill-seeker.”

Sam assumed a pompous expression. “I was serving my country.”

“If there was ever any doubt about why they’re friends,” James said to Natasha. “When d’you wanna go?”

Everyone looked at him.

“You… comin’ too?” said Steve.

“Hey,” said James. “I’m not the one who has a problem with trains. Or heights of any kind.”

“I’m not afraid of heights,” said Steve indignantly.

“He really can’t handle trains though,” said Natasha. “We had to get across the Swiss Alps once two years ago for a mission, public transport in Switzerland is absolutely perfect, would’ve fit our cover – Steve wouldn’t do it. We drove.”

“Drama queen,” said James.

“I don’t have to sit here and take this from the fella who can’t even look at yoghurt,” said Steve.

“My digestive system is very delicate these days.”

“That’s why you’re having a second helping,” said Sam.

“You’re damn right.”

“How about the weekend after next?” Natasha asked.

“I’ll book it,” said Sam. “When are we gonna taste your cooking, then?”

“I’ll take you home and feed you after we’ve been parachuting,” Natasha promised.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

*********

Sam had been skydiving before – “Once or twice,” he claimed – at a place near Niagara Falls, so Natasha took the Friday and Monday off and the four of them made a weekend of it. Early in the afternoon they lined up for the tourist boat that would take them out to the Horseshoe Falls, and it emerged that Sam was the only one who’d seen them before.

“Really, really, Captain America’s never been to Niagara Falls. What else haven’t you seen? California? Vegas? The Grand Canyon? The Alamo?”

James yanked on the glove on his left hand with a look that suggested it was a habit he had long since ceased to take notice of. “Just how much money did you think we had growing up?”

“And what the hell do you think I have to do with the Alamo,” said Steve, laughing.

“You’d look cute in a Davy Crockett hat,” said Natasha, solemn as a judge, and OK, nobody had ever seen Bucky Barnes laugh _that_ much, she was sure.

“Have I ever told you,” Steve said, looking angelic, “just how god-awful your hair looks with those purple streaks in it?”

“That’s an unnecessarily personal kind of response,” said Natasha. “What’s your problem with my streaks?”

“They offend his artistic sensibility,” said Sam.

“They offend _my_ artistic sensibility, let alone Steve’s,” said James.

“You don’t have any,” said Natasha.

“That is in fact my entire point,” and Natasha was gearing up for a snappy reply when Sam said, “Guys –“ and the boat was moving. Everyone crowded to the rails; cameras and phones came out, kids climbed the railings; the boat horn sounded, and Natasha stepped to the side to get out of the way of the people pushing past her, her right shoulder brushing James’ chest, head tilted up to look at Steve. She had already known that James ran hotter than ordinary people, but now she realised Steve did too, and tucked between the two of them she was perfectly sheltered from the wind.

Steve looked down at her as her hair began to whip around her face, red and purple strands blowing against his chest and James’. “Are the Falls on your bucket list?” he asked.

“Actually no,” said Natasha, trying to catch her hair into a ponytail, eyes focussed on the Falls up ahead, the coast of the river sliding past as the boat ploughed through the water. “But I think they should be.”

“You can amend it,” said James. Natasha craned her head to look up at him and saw that he was smiling.

“I want you all to know that I’m very disappointed in the state of our national superheroes,” said Sam. “Never been to Niagara Falls, Christ.”

“ _You’ve_ been,” Steve pointed out, and grinned when Sam went a little red with pleasure.

*********

“Sam!”

“Once or twice,” Natasha said, grinning, as the owner of the parachuting company caught Sam in a bear hug.

“Fuck off,” Sam said over his shoulder. “Good to see you, Rachel. How you been?”

Rachel stepped back, delighted. “Good! Really good. What about you, you moved back to New York?”

“Yeah, it was… time,” Sam said, bland as possible. “So, uh, these guys are Steve, Nat and –“

“Bucky,” said James, holding out a hand to shake. “Hi there.”

Rachel looked him up and down and got a smile that made Natasha… kind of uncomfortable. Steve was rolling his eyes. “Hiiiiii. OK. Nice to meet you guys, I’m Rachel, any friends of Sam are totally welcome… So. To business. Have any of you been parachuting before?”

*********

They had driven to the border, leaving so early on Thursday morning that it probably still counted as late, but on Monday they left in the midmorning and drove back in the daytime. The weather was holding, though approaching clouds suggested rain tomorrow, and they drove in shifts and talked about music, when they talked at all. Skydiving had been – Natasha wasn’t sure she had a word for it – ecstatic, perhaps. Reminiscent of the rollercoaster that had started everything, but utterly different. No target; no drop zone; no secure channels, no thigh holsters, no purpose, no mission; just the fall, the stomach-dropping freedom, the beauty of the world below, the endless blue above, the wind in her ears, stinging her face, snatching her breath. She had fallen, gravity dragging her inexorably down, and had never felt so weightless.

At a rest stop somewhere around the halfway mark she sat on a picnic bench with her back to the table, crossed her legs at the knee, and said to James, “So if not trains, what then?”

It wasn’t any of her business, but, well, when had that ever stopped her?

He looked surprised. Then he said, “Gin and tonic.”

“Noooo,” Natasha said, delighted.

“Yeah. I had to report to Pierce once unexpectedly, I think this was in the Eighties, and he’d been drinkin’ them. And I just can’t.” He shook his head. “Can’t smell it, can’t look at it, nothin’. And you know the worst thing?”

“You used to really like a gin and tonic,” said Natasha. It was a guess, but it was right.

“I used to really like a gin and tonic.”

“Ugh, that’s the worst. It’s breath mints for me. Which makes it weird because loads of people suck breath mints. It’s better now but the first few years it was like –“

“Like someone had put their hand into your torso and started squeezing your intestines?”

She laughed. “My vision would go fuzzy at the edges.” She sighed. “One of the handlers would always suck them, one of the get-right-in-your-face-and-yell ones.”

“Yablonsky,” James said. “Yellow hair, alcoholic. That’s why he was always eating them.”

They were both quiet for a few moments. Steve and Sam had been inside forever; probably chatting up the girl at the cash desk, Natasha thought vaguely. Then she said, “I wasn’t sure if you remembered.”

James, sitting beside her, legs flung out in front of them and spread, just short of an invitation, in a posture she was fairly sure he had cribbed from the TV, pushed his sunglasses up his nose and said, “I wasn’t sure you remembered.”

“It all came back to me,” she said dryly. “The wipe… it wore off after a few years.”

“I didn’t at first. But the more often I saw you, the more… the more it fell into place.”

“Well.”

“Listen, Nat –“

Close to panicked, she flung up her hand between them. “If you’re about to say what I think you’re about to say – don’t. Just – just forget it.”

“Just forget it?” He was incredulous.

“Don’t burden me with it whatever you do,” she snapped.

“OK,” he said. “OK. I didn’t actually mean to start a fight.”

“This is not what you and I would ordinarily call a fight.”

He even smiled, though it was faint, and leaned towards the bitter, if not outright self-flagellating. Natasha crossed her arms over her chest. The taste of the coffee she’d finished earlier was still in her mouth and she was squinting a little even behind her own sunglasses.

“You gonna tell Steve?”

James glanced at her. “That we loved each other?”

“Oh god!” Natasha made an impatient movement. “Aren’t we too old for that?”

He breathed in suddenly, all his relaxed calm transmuted into a stillness that set alarm bells off in her head. “What, too old for what? To call it love?”

“We were barely even human, James.”

“And that’s at the bottom of this whole runaround, isn’t it,” he said. She didn’t know what he meant, but even more than that she didn’t recognise his voice anymore. Steve maybe would have, she supposed, because this was what Bucky Barnes sounded like when he had a fight with someone he – when he had an ordinary, everyday, human fight with you. “You twisting your head around so much you don’t think you’re human.”

“I’m twisting my own head around?” Natasha felt stunned with anger. When she jumped to her feet it didn’t register that she had done so until he followed her up, face tight.

“Of course you are! Listen to yourself – bucket lists and oh we weren’t even human, James – well, I hate to have to tell you this, but we were. OK? You don’t have to fulfil a set of requirements in order to count as a real person, there’s not a checklist or a fucking exam or any kind of a time limit, you are a person, you just _are_ , you always fucking were, and I don’t know where the hell you get the balls from to stand there and dictate to me what I am and am not allowed to feel for you.”

Natasha was clenching her fists and shaking. “Don’t you! Don’t you really!” Her voice rose so much several people looked over at them, but she was past caring. “How dare you tell me – you have no idea what you’re talking about, don’t come the fucking pathetic brainwashed POW with me, I know you inside out and backwards, don’t you _dare_. You shook it off and you walked back into your life – into your _identity_ – you had a name, a mother and father, sisters, friends, _Steve_ , for fuck’s sake, Steve above _all_ – and I don’t even know when my real birthday is but you get to decide how I deal with this, who I make myself when you’re not around, why, because we used to fuck?”

“I love you,” he said baldly. “You can scream about it all you like but you won’t change it. I love you, and this – this bullshit that you’re doing to yourself, trying to be – trying to contort yourself out of all recognition to avoid what’s right under your nose, telling yourself you’re not a real person, that is bullshit, Natasha. Fucking bullshit. What about Fury, and Barton and his wife, and whatshername, Maria Hill? And Steve, what about Steve? All these people who think you’re amazing, but you’ve got some idea – some screwed-up manual for humanity you cribbed off of the TV or outta some shitty magazine, and you won’t be satisfied with yourself until you’ve ticked every single unnecessary box, hobbies and furniture and fuck only knows, all the – the surplus _debris_ that doesn’t matter, compared to the people you have in your life, and I say that as someone who’s lost all of ‘em but two.”

If someone had taken a swing at her then she would not have known nor managed to defend herself. She was so angry her whole body felt tight with it, as if her skin had shrunk a size in the seconds he had been speaking. She was flushed and hot and there was a tightness in her stomach like a – a stone, red-hot, dragging at her, a tight sour line of – of _something_ – that ran from her throat to her gut and made her feel pulled-tight and tense and small and alone.

“We’re done here,” she said. “I’m done. I’ll get the bus.”

“For god’s sake,” he said, but she was already halfway across the parking lot, back to the car. Her bag was in the trunk; she snatched it out and forced herself to turn her back on him, forced herself past the voice in her head screaming at her to hold a gun on him until he was out of sight, and he said, “Stop – Nat – _Natalia_ –“ and that, _that_ made her turn, made her spin back around so fast she felt dizzy.

“ _If you ever call me that again I’ll rip your fucking throat out_.”

He’d taken his sunglasses off. Eyes grey-blue like a hazy summer evening, so wide and shocked it tore her chest open, hand outstretched to her, for her. She had always fit just right into his arms, under his chin.

She walked away.

*********

Coulson, back in the early days when he and Nick had been her handlers direct, slowly helping her acclimate to SHIELD, had had a saying: never go to work angry. Natasha had considered it a good one: anger was detrimental to concentration, distracted from the mission object, led to slipups and sloppy work. But right now she was so furious she could’ve punched through concrete, and there was only one way to fix it.

“You’re just in time,” said Bobbi.

“The hell did you do to your hair?” said Clint, staring.

Natasha bared her teeth at them in an expression that in no way resembled a smile and flung herself into the back of the car.

*********

Once they had stopped in Jersey she hunted up a hairdresser’s and made the woman give her a pixie cut. When she stood up to pay and leave the floor was scattered with red and purple, long straight hanks of hair she no longer had any kind of use for. The dye had grown out far enough that there was no trace of purple left.

*********

When Bobbi was just being Bobbi Morse she wore this amazing perfume. Natasha had used to sit in her room and sniff the bottle, at the very beginning, wondering what kind of woman wore it, what sort of person would choose to live the way Natasha had been made to. It was still a smell that made her feel safe, and sitting on the bed beside her now, flipping through the file Clint had given her, some of the itching, impotent fury that had been bubbling under her skin since her fight with the Soldier at the rest stop began to subside.

“Who’s running this place?”

“We’re not sure, but a professor at MIT who goes by Vermis seems to have a connection,” said Bobbi. “My suspicion is that he’s one of those unethical science experiment types.”

“Hand was a convenient guinea pig because, being dead already, she wouldn’t be missed,” said Natasha.

“Probably. There may also be a more personal motivation – one of Victoria’s open cases before DC involved labs in Eastern Europe; we think she was closing in on Vermis before the HYDRA reveal.”

Natasha sighed. “Lovely. Where are we meeting Nick and Maria?”

“Virginia. Um, how are the, uh, the cookery classes?”

Silence. Natasha rubbed her thumb across the page she was holding, feeling the thin texture of the paper. A list of lies presented themselves, a collection of options for deflection, evasion.

“I enjoy them a lot,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

Natasha looked up. Neither of them had never treated her like a child, but both Clint and Bobbi had a voice that – it was hard to explain – that she had come to associate with reminders of shibboleths she should not have forgotten, mantras like _you don’t have to do anything you don’t want_ and _if it makes you happy go for it_ that could be truth and lie at one and the same time.

Bobbi was watching her, and her face was solemn with concern. “Are you OK?” she asked.

Yes of course. Probably not. How was she supposed to tell? _There’s not a checklist, or a fucking exam, or any kind of a time limit._ How was she supposed to confirm mission success if she didn’t have the most basic goddamn mission parameters?

“I don’t know,” she said.

Bobbi held her arm out, offering an embrace: human touch and warmth and comfort. It was another few moments before Natasha could let herself accept it.

*********

Nick and Maria met them in a parking lot in Virginia, dressed like hobos and looking irritated about it.

“And the band’s back together,” said Clint. “Be still my beating heart. How’s Coulson, oh glorious leader?”

Nick’s mouth got all pinched and shrivelled up.

“Aw, he thought we didn’t know,” said Natasha.

Nick said, “You know, I trusted you to –“

“No, Nick, you didn’t,” said Clint.

Nick looked at Bobbi. Bobbi crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t say anything. Natasha glanced at Maria and said, “You’re lucky I haven’t told Steve.”

“Out of the generous goodness of your heart,” said Nick sourly.

“Because he’s got enough on his plate without worrying about your lunatic vigilante spy academy for former teenage con girls,” said Natasha.

“If you’re referring to Skye,” said Nick.

“Well I’m not talking about Melinda May, am I? Though I will say, someone needs to sit that girl down sometime and explain to her just how much better she could do than Coulson.”

“Would you like to volunteer?” said Nick, getting waspish. “You’ve been hiding up in Brooklyn for months, Romanov, shacking up with Barnes and Rogers and learning to bake, or so it sounds.”

And the other shoe dropped. Natasha had felt it coming on for days, ever since the fight, and here it finally was. It was like having a lead weight dropped down her spine, like receiving a wipe: her body straightened, her shoulders fell back, her mind emptied. There was the mission, and the people in front of her to whom she owed all her oldest debts but one. Everything else went away.

It was an indescribable relief.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, voice wiped of inflection and accent. “Barnes is the single most dangerous asset existing, more dangerous than the Hulk, even, because he’s extremely intelligent – I shouldn’t have to tell you this, by the way – and he will _never_ _recover_ , Nick. He will never be predictable, or safe, or truly and only Bucky Barnes, ever again. There is no final healing for us. And Rogers has already proven that he will put Barnes above nearly every other possible priority. Do you really want those two running around one of the most densely populated areas of Earth without a specialist close to put them both down if that needs to happen?”

The silence in the parking lot was absolute and awful. You could have heard a pin drop. Nick – for an instant Nick looked surprised. Then he looked stricken.

“I thought you were friends,” said Maria.

Natasha smiled. “They’re entertaining companions, and they’re very fond of Natalie Rushman.”

Clint drew a breath in through his nose, arms clamped across his chest.

“This bucket list business,” Bobbi started.

“Men tend to like it when attractive young women ask them for their help,” said Natasha. “It affords them a chance to feel superior and knowledgeable, even when they’re not.”

Nick said quietly, “I would never have asked you –“

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “To play a part?”

“They think you’re friends.”

“They’re not the first. I’m sure they won’t be the last. Oh come on, Nick, this isn’t keeping me up at night. I’m comfortable with everything. Whatever it takes.”

“In the bunker, you said to me –“

“I said what Rogers needed me to say in order to trust me. Now are we here to rescue Agent Hand or not? Because I think she would appreciate the success of that mission coming sooner rather than later.”

*********

Set-up and stakeout was a routine comforting in its familiarity. There were no pitfalls here; Natasha knew and understood everything that needed doing, required no advice and wanted no company. All the same she was grateful that the other people on the job with her were the same consummate professionals with whom she had worked best in the past. It made for a smoother, easier partnership.

The facility was an underground bunker that had been carved out of a long-closed mine in northern Kentucky. The woods were evergreen, still thick and dark this late in the year, damp and cool but less unpleasant than it could have been. Natasha and Clint made their way to one of the old mine shafts that had been re-purposed into part of the ventilation system for the base, silent as shadows. Owls hooted; a fox rustled through the undergrowth; other small animals as well. Nick and Maria would take the front door, Bobbi already inside, hair dyed black and playing up the HYDRA agent for all she was worth. It took seconds to get inside once they reached the shaft. Through the comms came loud and clear the noise of her companions breathing, Bobbi’s clipped voice giving orders, cowing the scientists. Sadistic fucks.

Once they were in, they killed the PA and internal comms by the relatively simple expedient of hooking up an ipod and blasting AC/DC. Natasha had got the idea from Stark, and it worked well: the entire base exploded in confusion, people running out of dorms half-naked, scientists yelling, security fighting through the mess of shouting angry bodies to shut down the noise. There was no chance of meaningful communication between them and their boss, given the sheer decibel level, and given also that Bobbi had just shot him in the back of the head.

Down, down three levels, four, finally finding abandoned corridors, labs empty at this time of night, four security guys at the end of a long hallway, two dead to Clint’s arrows, the other close enough that Natasha took care of him, the fourth yelling into his comm and trying to fire on them at the same time till another arrow sank into his throat. Clint snatched his arrows out of the bodies as Natasha broke into the holding cell.

Hand was a mess: emaciated, hair chopped off, sleep-deprived and shivering. But she tried to stand when she saw Natasha, and she stumbled out of the cell as best she could on her own two feet. Clint grabbed her arm and drew it over his shoulders; Natasha ran ahead to the stairwell. Footsteps, noise of a body hitting the ground, Bobbi.

“All clear,” she said. “Fury and Hill are picking them off at the main entrance.” There would be a pile of unexplained corpses for law enforcement to handle at the end of this. Natasha was past caring. Law enforcement had never been her problem. Bobbi stepped past her to help Clint drag Hand up the stairs, elevators were no good, they left you trapped like rats. It was slow going. Into populated corridors again, Natasha took four operatives out, noting the adrenaline rush in her blood, heightened pulse rate, breath coming faster. She was out of shape, comparatively speaking. Lone workouts were all well and good, but maybe she could get Steve or James to spar with her –

No, said the Widow. Unwise. They know too many of your tricks as it is. Or had you forgotten who taught you them in the first place?

She had not. Nor had she forgotten that she’d passed them on to Steve. They came from James; they were, in a sense, Steve’s by right. Very well. Natasha would find another way.

There was no way they would be able to get Hand up the ventilation shaft without ropes and a pulley, but they had planned for that. She hissed when Natasha and Bobbi buckled her in, Clint halfway up the shaft already.

“Embarrassing,” she said. “Teach me to get vengeful.”

“We’ve all made that mistake,” said Bobbi calmly. “You all right? Please don’t puke on either of us going up.”

Hand snickered tiredly, the noise harsh in her throat. There were track marks up her arms where she had been repeatedly injected, and her eyes were reddened, pupils blown.

“I didn’t expect a rescue,” she said. “Thank you for coming for me.”

Bobbi nodded shortly and jerked on the ropes. Slowly Hand started to rise.

*********

They gathered again at Nick’s safehouse in Lexington, where Hand was confined to bed while a trusted doctor looked her over and hooked her up to all manner of drips.

“Physically her condition is remarkably stable,” she said.

“Mentally?” said Nick.

“I don’t think she’s going back to work any time soon, Nick,” said Natasha.

“I don’t need her back at work,” said Nick. “I need her healthy.”

“And un-brainwashed.”

There – another awful silence. Natasha sighed. “You have to consider the possibility.”

Reluctantly, Nick nodded.

*********

“You’re sure?”

“Vermis,” said Hand. “I’m sure. What are you going to do?”

Natasha dropped the photo into her lap and looked at her steadily.

Hand chuckled. It was still an awful, rasping noise. “Justice for one and all, meted out by the Black Widow herself. You’ve gone soft.”

Natasha said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

A car drove past on the street outside the window, and from downstairs the rumble of Nick and Clint’s voices came to them distantly through the thin plywood door. Hand rolled her head on the pillow, looking away.

At last she said, “I don’t see much point in recovering just to live in a world Izzy’s no longer in.”

“There doesn’t have to be a point,” Natasha said. “There shouldn’t be a point.” Hand looked at her, surprise flickering in the dulled eyes. “Don’t treat it like a mission. Don’t treat yourself like a mission – you’ll never – never succeed at it. You’ll tear at yourself, again and again, for years, for no reason. You’re Victoria Hand. Recover. And be Victoria Hand.”

“Do you think I’m brainwashed?”

Yes. No. Can’t rule it out. Shouldn’t rule it out. Should not have rescued you – should have put a bullet in your brain, ended it, burnt your body and walked away.

“No,” Natasha said.

“Why not?”

Why not indeed. “If you were brainwashed you would not be grieving for your wife right now. I don’t think you would even be capable of faking it.”

“You _have_ gone soft,” said Hand, and reached up with a gaunt and trembling hand to wipe the tears off her face.

*********

They couldn’t snipe him in the street – Vermis. They had left too many unexplained bodies behind them already. Natasha toyed with the notion of poison: something old-fashioned and elegant, perhaps hemlock. But Clint’s solution was by far the most practical. They broke into his apartment one night and injected him with a syringe full of air. The embolism didn’t take long.

*********

“Were you lying?” said Clint.

Hand on the car door, ready to leave, Natasha paused. He didn’t often ask her that. He didn’t look at her, though his stance relaxed to something easy and intimate, one hand idle on the steering wheel, the other on his thigh.

“When?”

“In the parking lot in Virginia.”

Natasha pursed her lips. “Would you like me to have been lying?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Poor baby Natashenka again, scary as hell but too fucked up to ever be human.

“You’re a pragmatic person, Nat,” said Clint. “You don’t wipe all your slates clean and then begin to rebuild by putting up the same structures you just tore down. You call her Natalie Rushman because it gives you plausible deniability, but she’s not a cover.”

He didn’t push her to reply. It was six minutes twenty seconds before she could.

“When I first came to the red rooms I was about six or seven, and I hated my hair. Loathed it. I tried to tear it out – no sharp objects – and they restrained me every night for weeks. I wasn’t permitted to damage their property, not even when their property was myself. See, I thought – I was a baby – I thought if it had been any other colour but red they wouldn’t have taken me.”

Clint didn’t say anything for three minutes thirty-four seconds. Then he sighed. “Go on,” he said, “beat it, go home. Whatever the fight was about…”

“Nothing,” said Natasha, sixteen months of having lived in Clint and Bobbi’s house having provided her with the knowledge that when a person claimed a fight with someone they loved had been about Nothing, what that person actually meant was that the fight had been about Everything.

“Nothing, everything, the colour of your pyjamas, do I look like I care,” said Clint. “But Nat, if be honest isn’t on your bucket list yet, now would be a good time for an amendment.”

“And with that pithy piece of wisdom you will leave me,” said Natasha.

For the first time Clint looked right at her. “It’s not supposed to be work, but it does take honesty,” he said. “Come visit us sometime.”

“I hate DC.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He grinned. “OK. We’ll come to you.”

She got out and slammed the door on him – slammed the trunk as well when she fetched her duffle out. The car pulled away from the kerb, engine purring happily, and slid out into the street. Evening was closing in rapidly, and it would be an hour and a half before she got home from here. Jersey City. Jesus. Never ever again. Natasha wanted to be back in Brooklyn so badly she amazed herself. She wanted trees and brownstones and parks and hipster coffee shops and farmer’s markets. She wanted to go back to work on Tuesday next so much it ached, needed the quiet routine, the customers, the warm gold lights, the fusty, comforting smell of books and wood polish. There was a train to 14th Street; from there at least three that would take her to Brooklyn. She was so tired she was plotting her way to the Avenue U stop on the Q train before she remembered it wasn’t her stop but Steve and James’.

She nearly fell asleep getting to 14th Street; there she bought a coffee and tipped two sugars into it, sighed as the too-sweet brew went down. It shook her awake, nerves jangling, and on the subway home she watched her fellow-passengers with the heightened awareness of a caffeine rush combined with post-mission alertness and habits. Between her feet her bag was heavy and conspicuous. People would remember her. She couldn’t manage to slip into the easy walk she needed to pass unnoticed – too tired, too cold, too tense. She needed to get some food in. That could wait. She would just have to get up in the morning and go shopping first thing. Sleep was more important.

Bucky Barnes was standing on the top step of her building, outside the front door. He had the collar of his leather jacket turned up and his gloves on. Natasha dropped her duffle at the foot of the steps and said, “Are you stalking me?”

He looked around. Meeting his eyes was –

“No,” he said. “Unless comin’ over to see if you’re back OK counts as stalking.”

“It might.” She bit the sentence off angrily.

James grimaced. “Nat…”

“Don’t start again.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t have a right…”

“No you didn’t.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Her fingers were freezing. Suddenly, her movements jerky with cold, she unfolded herself, picked up her bag, and marched up the steps. He moved aside as she came towards her, didn’t reach for her. Natasha pushed past him until they were level with each other, jangling her pockets until she found her keys. He was so, so warm.

“That it?” he asked quietly.

“Pretty sure I don’t owe you jack shit.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“So.” She was clutching her keys so tightly that they bit into her fingers. Steve had given her the key ring ornament, it was a miniature Stark Tower.

Finally he said, “I’ll see you, Natalia,” and moved down a step, which only made her angry. He didn’t get to just walk away. He didn’t get to call her that, either. Looking at the back of his head, the stupid wide shoulders, the words bubbled up without conscious volition.

“I thought I dreamt it,” she said. He flinched. Good. She kept on talking. “When the wipe broke, I thought I was dreaming it. I’d lived with Bobbi and Clint by then, I was working for SHIELD… I knew how they worked, Clint and Bobbi. There were people in the world who chose to do our job, who liked it, who still managed to be… Who loved each other. So I thought I dreamed it. Someone in that place, who loved me.”

“I do,” he said harshly.

Natasha ignored him. “And you know what happened after that? Yeah you do. Odessa. There you were, my Soldier I dreamt up who loved me, and you shot me and walked past me bleeding on the ground to put two in the head of the man I’d been protecting and then you walked away without even looking at me, and god, I know it’s not your fault, I know, but I can’t, I just _can’t_.”

Can’t what? She couldn’t tell.

“If I could change it –“

She snorted. “If you could _change_ anything you’d go back to 1945, fish Steve out of the Arctic, pass him off to Director Carter and marry some sweet, innocent nurse who can’t tell the difference between an AK-47 and a Kalashnikov and who you’ve never had to teach to kill a man with her bare hands.”

“There you go again. Telling me how to feel about things. My sister was a nurse before she’d saved up for med school and sweet and innocent ain’t the word for it, let me tell you.”

“Go to hell.”

For the first time he looked at her, and had the cheek to grin. It wasn’t in the least amused. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. That’s what you want to hear from me, isn’t it? I’m broken and miserable, I’m eternally dangerous, I’m too fucked up to understand my own feelings, because then you’d have an excuse for not knowin’ how to handle yours. I love you. Deal with it.”

She was absolutely speechless. She didn’t even have the words to tell him how wrong he was. James drew his mouth into a tight pinch, opened it – his tongue flicked against his lips, and then he turned and left. Natasha clenched her hands at her sides and watched him until his rapid stride took him around the corner towards the subway station.

*********

“…and then, and then, because he’s a raging asshole, after having accused me of – of _wanting_ him to be brainwashed, he fucks off. Just” – she flung her hand out across the table in a gesture implying James had flown off across the street instead of marched – “gone.”

“I wish you wouldn’t put me in the middle of this,” said Steve.

Natasha snorted. “Who else am I supposed to put in the middle of it?” She sipped her coffee resentfully.

“Literally anyone else in the world,” Steve said. He was playing with the receipt, folding and unfolding it and tearing it in stupid places. He’d be scattering snowflakes of paper across the table in a minute.

“You’re the one who knows him best,” said Natasha.

“Yeah but we don’t actually, literally live in each other’s brains.”

“No one knows that better than me, Steve.”

Steve sighed. He rolled the receipt into a scrunched-up ball and dropped it into the ashtray. “That’s probably true. I still don’t – look, it’s between the two of you, it’s got nothing to do with you and me.”

“I didn’t say it did,” said Natasha waspishly.

“OK,” said Steve, visibly controlled. “You want another coffee?”

She sighed. “Sure. Why not. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m a mess. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not like you’re the only one,” said Steve, injecting a note of careless cheer into his voice. Natasha was grateful for it. “I’ve been a mess for the greater part of my life, no matter what the history books tell you.”

She laughed. “I kind of worked that one out.”

“I bet.” Smiling, he leaned back to catch the waitress’s attention and tugged his sleeves up a ways, first left then right, reached with his right hand to rub at his neck, an unconscious little gesture she had never seen him make at SHIELD. Some days Steve was positively made up of mannerisms new to her, more expressive and relaxed than the usual ones. She liked it.

Then she realised his wrist was bruised. They were mostly hidden under the wide watchstrap he wore, and on another man she would have assumed they were a week old at least, but at Steve’s rate of healing they had been made no earlier than three days ago. Probably two.

She was staring. Steve noticed. His hand stilled at the side of his neck. He dropped his eyes, following the line of his gaze, and made a little ‘uff’ noise of understanding. Fingers had made those bruises, a hand wrapped tight around his wrist, holding him down, keeping him trapped. No ordinary human hand could have marked Steve’s skin that way; he had crawled out of missile craters with fewer marks on him. Metal fingers, though, titanium alloy fingers. For a moment Natasha didn’t know what the hell to think. Night terrors? Or – but she looked from the bruises to Steve’s face and saw that he was blushing.

Her jaw dropped. Panic unfolded in her stomach.

Steve dropped his hand to the table top. “Yeah, so. Please don’t put me in the middle of it?”

Natasha had seen romcoms and sitcoms and _Sex and the City_ : she was supposed to angst and worry and laugh it off and call Bobbi once she left and ask her advice. She didn’t.

“He told me he loved me.” She wasn’t jealous, she was worried for Steve. And yet god knew the mental image of James holding him down was – “Twice. I mean once in the rest stop and then yesterday. I mean this is really awkward but seriously, you can do better.” He’d brought HYDRA down for being megalomaniac assholes, but he’d spent a year doing a jig on their smoking remains for _looking_ at James Barnes. She forced herself to comforting flippancy. “Come down the bookstore, I’ll find you some nice hipster boy with – with obscure taste in art, or a girl who –“

Steve’s blush had faded; it was his turn to have his jaw drop, a little, mouth parted in a perfect o of surprise. And if there was one thing Steve and Natasha had in common it was a hair-trigger temper. His voice was low and sharp when he said, “I don’t want a nice hipster boy with obscure taste in art. I want Buck. And the only girl I’m interested in happens to be _sitting right in front of me_.”

It was like all the sound had been sucked out of the room, all the gravity even; she felt like she was floating, head disconnected from her body. Oh. _Oh_. Oh fuck. Disaster. Code Red. Go dark, Agent Romanov. Go dark now.

She didn’t remember how.

“Why – _why_ would you –“

“Fall for either of you?”

“Tell me about it!”

“Uh –“

“Everything was going so well!”

Thoroughly nonplussed, Steve said, “Was it?”

“Oh fuck.” Natasha put her head in her hands.

After a moment Steve said, “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head without looking up or taking her hands away.

“Look, how about a deal. I never bring that up again, and you quit poking at my love life like it’s an interesting science experiment you’d like to see blow up.”

Natasha shot upright. “I don’t want it to blow up! I want it to exist.”

“It… does,” said Steve, glancing at his wrist.

“Because I want you to be happy!”

“I… am. And thank you,” he added, “I want you to be happy too.”

“Happy’s not on my list,” Natasha snapped. “This is what friends do, they want each other to be happy, they – they –“

“Take you on museum outings and complain about mutual friends and go skydiving,” said Steve. “I never thought different, Nat. I’m sorry I snapped and I’m sorry I said –”

“Then what are you even saying!”

Steve gawped, waving his hands. “…please quit trying to meddle with my love life?”

“But what about James?”

“What about him!” Steve stared at her. “He’s got nothing to do with you and me. I’ve got nothing to do with you and him.”

Something sharp and cold twisted in Natasha’s chest. “I’ve got nothing to do with you and him?” She didn’t like that. She didn’t like that at all. There was stuff she didn’t know about them and that was fine, she didn’t need to be actively omniscient, but this sounded like a deliberate wall, a keep-out sign. She didn’t like keep-out signs. She didn’t like being told there were things about either of them she wasn’t _allowed_ to know.

“You didn’t even notice when we started dating.”

She sniggered derisively. “Dated! Don’t tell me you _dated_. The nuclear fall-out from _that_ disaster would’ve been visible from space.”

“OK, so he woke me up one night from the middle of a screaming nightmare and I looked at him and said _god I love you_ , and the next time he was reasonably sure we were both having a lucid moment he jumped me,” said Steve. “It was about the least romantic thing you could possibly imagine. Why do you even need to know?”

“I don’t!” But that was a lie. She did need to know, every detail, every word; she needed to know when and what kind of nightmare and how often Steve had them and how James dealt with his own and how she, Natasha, could help. If she could help. She knew she could help.

She didn’t like being told there were things about either of them she wasn’t allowed to know because – might as well face it, girlfriend – they were both of them hers. Panic unfolding became panic exploding.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Nat –“

“Don’t Nat me,” she snarled, standing up. “Just don’t. How did you think this would go? What did you expect from me?”

Now she had startled him. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, Nat. I wouldn’t do that. We’re friends. We’re just friends.”

“Of course not. Poor baby broken Natashenka who doesn’t know her own mind and can’t work out how to be human –”

“Whoever you’re having that fight with it is _not me_ ,” said Steve, very red and very controlled. He hadn’t moved off the bench. He had put his hands, palm down, flat on the table. She couldn’t raise her eyes from his bruises, James’ bruises. “I would never ask for anything because I’m not dumb enough to think you want to give it.”

And just like that she knew exactly how it had gone, between James and Steve: silence and smiles, a new relationship being built with care and patience on the ashes of the old, strength of affection the same even if they were both too different to fit into the same places in themselves, and – four anguished little words in the middle of a nightmare to a phantom standing in the room with him who shouldn’t have been there at all. Natasha felt sick. James had done the jumping because Steve would never think he was entitled to ask for it, not anymore. He must have, once, with Peggy Carter… but that was seventy years ago. And here she had sat and cursed about James and needled him until he snapped at her; she’d had no right to do that. He was always so private. She had no right to anything he’d told her here. She wanted it, but she didn’t have the right.

She _wanted_ it. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

“Oh you are plenty dumb, Rogers, don’t you ever think different,” she said and marched out.

*********

Natasha took double shifts at the bookstore as often as she could get away with in the next week and rode her bike at night till her face and ears and fingers were ready to freeze off and her legs were so stiff she could barely climb off it, circling round and round the city under endless sodium-orange street lights, weaving through a different borough every night, stopping by the water to stare at the sleepless skyline of Manhattan on her way home.

It was late November. It would be Thanksgiving soon. Her thirty-first birthday was a month away. She had checked off, with methodical thoroughness, about four-fifths of all the items on her bucket list, and she didn’t feel any more like a real person than she had in the summer, when she had decided to try her hand at normal for the first time in all these years. She had been dating her best friend and her ex, both at the same time, for nearly six months, without even noticing what she was doing, and apparently while they had been dating each other at the same time.

Well. This was _awful_.

Nick had been right after all.

*********

She still had a key. If it had been the other way around she would have broken into their place first off to retrieve it, but it had not come up during the actual arguments and no terse text or voicemail demanding its return had followed in the days after. Natasha didn’t quite know what that was proof of: that they both needed looking after, expertise notwithstanding, or that they both wanted her to come back, or that they just didn’t care enough?

It’s not supposed to be work, Clint had said. And it wasn’t work. It was much worse than that. If it had been work she would have been able to recognise it sooner, would have had some sort of warning. She had been so bowled over by it because it was so easy… because by the time Steve had rubbed her nose in what she was doing it was already too late. No single-second ecstatic epiphany following a blurry montage of sunlit scenes, lingering looks under a starry night sky; no musical accompaniment with significant changes of song at relevant moments. How did people tell what was going on in their heads without appropriate musical cues to help them? It was a mystery.

“Like a cat that’s followed me home and taken up residence on my doorstep whether I want it or not,” she said to her reflection in the kitchen window. Now she just needed to decide whether to feed it or call the animal shelter, metaphorically speaking.

“Theory: ignore the cat,” she said, and fetched beer out of the fridge. Was it possible to ignore the cat? “It’s a very loud and obnoxious cat.” It had also taken up residence in every nook and cranny of her life. “Even the furniture, ha ha ha. Jesus fucking Christ.”

If she stayed in New York the cat stayed with her. That seemed clear. Could she stand to stay in New York _and_ keep the cat?

There was a whiteboard hanging on the wall by her front door. She had bought it on the IKEA trip of infamy with vague ideas about shopping lists and leaving herself notes about Things To Do; now it served beautifully as a place to put her pros and cons.

“Cons,” she said to the metaphorical cat, pacing up and down the hall. “You’ll never go away. Ever.” That much was clear. If mind-wipes couldn’t do it! – and Steve was a stubborn son of a bitch. He didn’t walk away from things he loved. (Exhibit A: James Buchanan Barnes.) “Furthermore, personal space – gone.” Neither of them had ever come here uninvited, or even asked for a key in exchange for their own, with the sole exception of James coming by to try and check on her when she had been gone. He hadn’t been back. “Additionally, dark and troubled past.” That just made her snigger. “Plus, Nick doesn’t like them.” At nearly thirty-one it was high time she had a boyfriend he disapproved of. Or two. “Moreover.” She couldn’t think of a moreover. Back to that later. Pros. What were the pros of the metaphorical cat?

Looking at that unwritten-upon half of the whiteboard made her shiver. There was a stone in her stomach again, the same pulled-tightness in her throat. “You’ll never go away. Ever.” She was a bloody-minded bitch too. “Furniture shopping, and skydiving, and showing up at my job to argue about pretentious, obscure German writers.” Twitching at the price of movie theatre tickets, and she would never get either of them into a Walmart even at gunpoint, never. The warmth of their bodies on either side of her as they stood on the tourist boat at the Horseshoe Falls. There were no such things as guarantees in life but as long as there was breath in her body Odessa, DC, would never happen again. When James was very tired or very pissed off his voice went very deep and blurred, a Brooklyn accent out of a black and white noir flick. When Steve forgot he was Captain America he laughed with his whole body and would do the dumbest things if you dared him to.

Maybe it was her own fault. Maybe she had dared him to… _There’s a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers_. None of them were in any kind of business now.

“Who gets hurt if I feed the metaphorical cat?” Her voice was shaking. “No one.” Unless she went and inadvertently killed the cat afterwards, out of a lack of cat-related experience. But the only way to gain experience was to feed the damn cat. Catch-22 for metaphorical cats. “Who gets hurt if I don’t? Mostly me. But” – into her mind flashed clear and sharp the sight of Steve’s face in the coffee shop, the roiling, angry look she had spent so much time at SHIELD trying to knock off his face – “probably all of us.” James walking away from her, quickly, but stiff as the tired old man he should have lived to become. _You want me to be broken because then you’d have an excuse for not dealing with your feelings_. Did she? Was he right? Did she want him to be broken so she could look at him and say, see, it’s not worth trying? _There’s not a checklist, or a fucking exam, or any kind of a time limit_. Except the one she had set herself. But if she had set it herself, she could undo it herself as well. _I’m not dumb enough to think you’d want to give it_ … but she did. She already had.

Natasha could have gone back on it. She knew that. She could have killed her own cat with a twist of her hands, flung it down and walked away without a second look. It would hurt like hell for a month, perhaps two or three. Then it would be over. You could kill anything if you tried hard enough: even your own unasked-for metaphorical cats.

But she couldn’t – Victoria was right, she had gone soft – she couldn’t kill theirs.

*********

She still had a key. They were in the kitchen, apparently not doing very much. The laptop on the counter by the microwave was open to the wiki page about Star Trek: The Next Generation. One or both of them must have liked the original series, then.

The bottle she had brought with her chimed unnaturally on the kitchen table when she set it down, carefully watching them watch her. The liquid inside was a warm autumn gold like forest leaves; you might, in the right light, have been able to mistake it for mead.

“Asgardian hooch,” she said. “I’ve never been properly wasted.”

James snorted with laughter. Steve’s mouth curled up at the corners, but he turned his head away to stare out the window when he spoke instead of looking at her.

“You gonna need it?”

Natasha refused to wring her hands. Or tremble. Oh god, she was trembling. James saw it even if Steve didn’t. His eyes widened, and his face – his face. Natasha couldn’t look at his face, couldn’t look at either of their faces. She hunted up some whiskey tumblers instead, put them on the table in a triangle arrangement.

“Well I guess that kind of depends,” she said, reaching for the bottle. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the abrupt turn of Steve’s head. James took the bottle out of her fingers and opened it himself with sure quick fingers. Bottleneck clanked gently against glass after glass. He poured a measure as if it were whiskey, a finger’s breadth for her and Steve, less for himself. Half the time Steve would finish his drink when they went out. Natasha chose her glass, held out one for Steve. When he took it their fingers brushed.

“Sip it,” James said, “don’t knock it back. It looks cool on the TV but it isn’t.”

Natasha smiled. “Slainte,” she said, and sipped.

Liquid light slid down her throat, warming her from head to toe, even to the tips of her fingers, always cold. It was nothing like the few sips of different liquors she had sometimes drunk on a job, or the warm but muted glow of wine or beer; rich, sweet, refreshing – Tolkien might have invented it – she closed her eyes and sipped again, wetting her lips with the taste.

“Oh wow,” said Steve softly. James sighed as if he had been waiting to for a long, long time. He put his glass down on the table again. Natasha’s breath caught in her throat. _There’s not a checklist, or a fucking exam, or any kind of a time limit._

The time limit was now.

“Natalia,” James said.

She was moving to him almost before the word had formed on his lips, two slow steps as if mesmerised, and he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her slow and lingering, the way they had never had time to kiss in the past, the way Bucky Barnes would kiss his girlfriends, or so she guessed. The way James would kiss Steve. The shape of his mouth was infinitely familiar, the touch of his hands – but she didn’t have words for that, no, nor for the warmth of him against her or the shape of his biceps under her clinging hands; how, she wondered dizzily, had she ever thought she’d dreamed this? How had she gone so long without it?

Then he pulled back, mouth already reddened, and his hands slipped away from her face as she turned, easy, how easy, hitching up on her tiptoes and gathered Steve close: “Nat – this –” and she pressed her fingers against his lips and said, “I want to give it, I always did, I’ve been such a fool,” and he and James had not been wasting their time, had they, oh my no not in the slightest, and she hadn’t even noticed. Too stunned to explore him, hands lying unmoving on his chest and he bit at her lips a little so that Natasha made a noise she couldn’t _believe_ had come out of her, but it made James say “ _Christ_ ,” and now she knew there was a third emotion besides exhaustion and anger that brought out his childhood accent. “Makes three of us, darlin’,” he said, kissing her neck, her jaw, and Steve said, “Love you, love you both so much,” and she slid back a little to lean against James as he and Steve kissed over her shoulder. Hell, over the top of her head, they were so tall. It was the hottest thing she had ever seen in her life, she could’ve sworn, and when she started to drag open the buttons of Steve’s shirt she saw her hands were shaking.

“C’mon,” he said when he saw what she was doing, god, dear god, he did it too, where had they been hiding those damn delicious accents all these years, shivering over her skin when he bent his head to kiss her again, to brush his mouth along her jaw and yes Captain America got stubble just like ordinary mortals, scraping her neck and throat just right, “c’mon, bedroom.”

She was so, so warm, like having a fever, like stepping in front of a fire after hours outside on a cold day. “Not a chance,” she said, “think my legs are gone,” Steve chuckling against her neck and shoulder and James’ hands moving down – “No, still here,” and because they were cheating assholes who read each other’s minds they manhandled her off her feet easily, thighs over Steve’s hips, and all Natasha had to do was hang on and kiss him.

Not exactly a problem. Oh, when James got back within her reach again – there – bedroom, dim lamplight, the door closed behind them, Steve stripping off as Natasha fit herself back into James’ arms; then she felt Steve at their side again, two pairs of hands dragging James’ clothes off, she had to kiss his shoulder, had to, had always wanted the right and the time to comfort him, soothe his hurts, wished she could see Steve’s to caress him the same way, they were kissing again, their hands under her shirt, pushing into her pants to slide them down.

Naked, Natasha pushed the pile of her clothes out of the way with her foot, watching them watching her. Possible reactions: vulnerability, shyness, arrogance? The window was open and the room was pleasantly cool. She had a hand on James’ chest, splayed across his heart. Both of them had chest hair, Steve’s fine and blond, James’ dark and thicker.

Steve said softly, “Nat?” His hand was hovering above her shoulder, wanting to touch but not sure if she wanted it. She did. Oh, she did. She was at the apex of the little triangle they were standing in, right in front of the bed.

“Sorry,” she said. “Trying really hard to quit thinking.” She stepped in close, had to crane her head back to look at James, her shoulder brushing Steve’s chest.

James took her hand and kissed it, stubble prickling against her palm. Natasha smiled at him, turned her face up to Steve’s for a kiss. Possible reactions: eagerness, desire, joy.

She was getting better at this being honest business.

*********

Hours – days weeks months? Entirely plausible – later she slid out of the bed and went to the bathroom, silent on bare feet. Steve stirred but James slept like the dead – Natasha remembered that; when the Soldier was permitted true sleep he crashed hard and was nearly impossible to wake. Ablutions over, she put the hand towel back on the rack and had turned to go when her own reflection caught her attention suddenly and completely. Her mouth was swollen; the v-necked t-shirt she had lifted off the bedroom floor did nothing to hide the hickeys low on her throat, the pink beard-burn. Her hair was a bird’s nest, her eyes wide and shocked at herself. Every inch of her body prickled with warmth, as if her skin had been replaced with – an electric blanket, or something. She was suddenly conscious even of her own heartbeat, the rhythm of her breathing.

And then she started to cry. Natasha stumbled sideways to make sure the door was closed and slid to the floor when it was, back against the side of the bathtub, knees drawn up to her chest, concentrating so hard on keeping quiet she didn’t notice the cold tile against her ass. No sobs, no wailing; just a sudden silent stream of tears and gasps of breath pushing past them. Ten minutes, maybe a little less. She pulled herself up again, hands tight on the sink, and nearly laughed out loud at the sight of her puffy face, her reddened eyes. What the hell was wrong with her? Sex had never made her cry before. Had it?

“Metaphorical cats,” Natasha said, hoarse and quiet. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” She giggled. Her eyes were wet, tears on her lashes glinting in the cold bathroom light. Was there some palpable difference between the Natasha Romanov of this morning, who had not known what it was like to be – to feel loved like this, and the Natasha Romanov of now, who did? Of course not. The thought made her laugh again, helplessly, as she wiped at her face. Was there a clean washcloth in here somewhere? She looked around, still laughing at herself, or perhaps she was crying again, and then Steve put his hand on her shoulder.

“Are you OK? You’ve been ages –“ and then he saw her face. But he seemed to understand perfectly, holding her tight when she sobbed after all, just a little.

“It’s all right. Shhh, love, it’s all right.”

“Hell.” She sniffed. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” he said. Natasha thought he was smiling. “I cried too.”

“Did you?”

“The first time, god yeah.” He kissed her hair. “So did Buck. Kind of feel like it now.”

“Oh my _god_.” She had to hide her face in his chest, cackling. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

“We were very lachrymose.”

“I can imagine.” She wiped at her face again as she drew back, still laughing, but of course she couldn’t imagine. If metaphorical cats made _her_ go to pieces like this…

Steve kissed her, blotchy, tear-stained face and all, and produced a clean washcloth from somewhere. Natasha ran it under the cold tap and pressed her hot face into it with a sigh of relief. He brushed his fingers over her shoulder but didn’t come closer, let her have a little space.

“It wasn’t…” He paused.

Natasha smiled into the washcloth. “Bad?” Oh, that was too adorable.

“Or… too much.”

That was too insightful. She sighed, a long gusty noise, and ran the washcloth under the tap again, blinking hard. “No,” she said. “Well, yes, but… anything would have been too much. We could’ve made out and snuggled and it would’ve been too much.” That might have been worse. It wasn’t what they had done; it was the fact that she was here, had come at all, had stayed. Was welcome, wanted, loved. “I didn’t realise I was so damn tightly-strung,” she added.

“It’s not really being tightly-strung,” Steve said. He had moved back to sit down on the edge of the bathtub. “It’s not being alone anymore, and then being…” In the mirror she saw him rub the back of his head awkwardly.

“I know,” she said. Oh how she knew. Their eyes met in the glass; they smiled at each other. Suddenly she said, “You know – we didn’t talk but – this is it, you know that, don’t you? For me. However we make it work. This is it.”

His smile softened. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t,” he said. “We both know that.”

She swallowed hard. God alone knew what she’d done to earn that trust. She rubbed the washcloth over her face again and pushed her damp hands through the mess of her hair.

"I never said thank you," she said quietly. "Did I?" For DC; for the bucket list; for this. For the metaphorical cat. _Did_ you thank someone for foisting a metaphorical cat on you? Was that a thing that people did?

"Neither did I," Steve said. "If it wasn't for you I think I'd have just -"

She couldn't stand to have him finish the thought. "Yes," she said. _How about a friend?_ She bit off another giggle. How about a metaphorical cat. "Me too."

“I miss your hair,” Steve said suddenly.

“I think I really like it like this,” Natasha said thoughtfully.

“You look great,” he agreed. “Still miss it.” He was teasing, smiling. It had been long when she and James had first been together, down to the middle of her back, so that the fingers of his left hand had snagged in it sometimes, which she had always loved, though she’d never told him that. The little sparks of pain had reminded and reassured her: you’re with the Soldier, with your Soldier. It wouldn’t have happened with anyone else. She turned around, back to the mirror, looked Steve up and down. James had left bruises on his hips that were already fading. Neither of them had bruised her. Even her hickeys were faint, fading things. Slow and passionate and tender – she could cross that off her list as well, making love – James had run his mouth off beautifully, not even dirty talk, not really, too many _I love you_ s. Steve had insisted, over and over, on making them both laugh. Next time she would show them a few tricks. Well, some time. Maybe. Safe. That was what had done it. The metaphorical cat made her feel safe. Ridiculous fucker. She was anything but. That was what made it exciting. Like jumping out of a plane.

“Ready to come back to bed?” Steve asked.

“Yeah.”

*********

In the morning Steve was out – _gone for breakfast_ , read the note on the bedside table – and it had started to rain, a vicious little late autumn cloudburst as if to remind them summer was long gone, regardless of how happy they were. Natasha stuck her head out of the covers long enough to hear the rain against the window and then burrowed back down again, pressing herself along James’ side.

“Morning,” he rasped.

“Filthy weather,” she said. “Ugh. Hi there.”

“First time we’ve done this.”

“Woken up together? Yeah.”

“You OK?”

“Yeahhhhhhhhh.” She drew the word out into a happy sigh.

He twisted a bit to kiss her – morning breath was awful – tangled their legs together. “No crying? Steve and I cried kind of a lot.”

Natasha grinned. “I might’ve cried. A little.”

“I love you,” he said.

The only thing it sparked in her was warmth. “I know.”

“I loved you then, too.”

“Are you trying to freak me out?”

“Pushing my luck,” he agreed. “No. I just want you to know. I’m sorry for being a dick the other night.”

“I forgive you. I think… you were probably right, a little, so, you know, I’m sorry too. And I _do_ know. I – it – me too. I told Steve last night – this is it.”

James smiled. “Yes it is.”

“I went over it all very carefully and came to the most sensible, logical, obvious conclusion.” He shook with mirth. She appreciated it that he was trying not to laugh out loud at her, but she had been so utterly stupid, she wouldn’t be offended. Dating them both and believing she wasn’t. “I had a metaphorical cat.”

Snort. “Is a pet on your bucket list?”

“Nope, not ever.” She thought about it. “I might retire the bucket list.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve covered most of it already.” Free climbing, she still wanted to go free climbing. And to Hawai’i. And she had never been camping for fun, with, like, tents and sleeping bags and campfires and marshmellows. S’mores? Was there a difference, and if so, what was it? Sharing a tent with James and Steve, probably a terrible idea. On the other hand, sex in the great outdoors, never experienced. On the _other_ other hand, sex right here in this bed – or her own – warm and comfortable and safe. She nosed, catlike and exploratory, at James’ jaw, the line of his throat, kissed the hollow between his collarbones, felt his pulse under her lips, the scrape of his stubble. He cupped the back of her head in his left hand and – there it was, the snag and pull of her hair catching in the metal fingers. Natasha had to stamp on an urge to start crying again.

“Natalia,” he murmured. “Sweetheart.”

The front door banged open; they heard Steve kicking his shoes off, turning the radio on; “Breakfast!” he called, and his quick footsteps went past the bedroom door to the bathroom. When he came back he was rubbing a towel through his wet hair. “You guys up?”

“No,” said Natasha.

Steve grinned at her. “I’ll put the coffee on.”

“Is this a thing? Does sex make him like this?”

“Energetic and bouncy,” said James. “Sadly yes.”

“Put that on the cons list,” she said. “Ugh, fine. Are there doughnuts?”

“Are there _doughnuts_ ,” said Steve. “I didn’t go out for tacos. Come on, Buck, sprinkles and everything.”

“I hate you,” James informed him – but he did get out of bed, squirming out from under the covers and climbing into sweats and a long-sleeved shirt. There was time, so much time, to remember all his scars, learn the lines of Steve’s body in just as perfect detail. Natasha put yesterday’s panties back on and a clean sweater she found in a cupboard drawer, hanging to her mid-thigh. The apartment was warm, thank god, and a curious if cursory poke around showed that they apparently still kept separate bedrooms – no wonder, if both of them got nightmares – and that the former guest room was now an art room of sorts, drafting table positioned by the window and paint tubes and coloured pencils scattered everywhere.

Steve said, “I might go back to art school.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” said Natasha. “I’ll sell you all your books at a discount.” But she was damned if she could work out which bedroom belonged to which of them.

There were doughnuts with sprinkles, and coffee, and scrambled eggs if she wanted them, and apple pie, home-made.

“You baked, didn’t you,” she said to James.

“Yep,” he said. “I gotta do something with my time besides therapy and keeping you two… entertained.”

“So you bake.”

“Eat up and put your pants back on,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

She looked at Steve. He smiled.

“It’s his baby.”

“It’s a project.”

“How come you’ve been in on my project from the start but this is the first time I hear about yours?”

“Reasons,” said James.

“You let him on the internet unsupervised?” She frowned at Steve, mock-sternly, and he laughed.

“He hates it.”

“He does,” James said.

“Is it cause it’s unnatural?”

“Well, creepy, sure. In the sense that _everything tracks you_.”

That was fair enough, given the givens – like his hatred of cell phones. They ate and washed and drank more coffee; there was a collection of new toothbrushes in the bathroom cupboard, bought in some sale or other, but the toothpaste they both liked tasted vile to Natasha and she told them so, at length, until Steve pinned her up against the wall by the bathroom door and kissed her till she forgot what either of their mouths tasted like, hot and flushed and clinging to him. You know. A little. When James came out of the shower she was riding Steve’s thigh and he was running his mouth off in her ear much, much more filthily than James had last night and basically it was well into the afternoon by the time they actually got out of the apartment, so much so that it was almost evening again already. The rain had stopped but the wind was cold, and Natasha linked her arm with James’ and pressed close – smiled when he pulled away and wrapped it over her shoulders instead. Whenever she looked over at Steve they grinned at each other like idiots.

It wasn’t far, this project James wanted to show her: a few blocks away, a long dark lot, a garage? James had the keys; she snuggled against Steve as he unlocked the place and pushed the folding doors back.

“Always ended up being the idiot who had to fiddle with the engines when they went down during the war,” he said, ducking inside and tossing the keys onto a metal workbench – there was a hollow clang – he stepped out of sight and snapped the lights on.

“Usually cause everyone else was busy with the important stuff,” said Steve. Natasha laughed, following James into the garage. He yanked the dust sheet off a car with a flourish like a professional magician. She clapped her hands.

“It’s a car.”

“Yes it is. What kind of reward would the lady like?”

The lady went to take it from him, smiling into the kiss. “It’s a Camaro.” An old-fashioned thing, once painted pale blue, long and strong and beautiful, all clean lines and style. She couldn’t have told you the year, but that was beside the point.

“I rebuilt her,” he said.

“It’s gorgeous.”

He smiled. “You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Cause the paint job is still really shitty.”

“The paint job will be the easiest thing to fix,” said Steve.

“Did you help?” Natasha asked, trailing her fingers over the hood as she walked around the car.

“He sits in the corner and sketches,” said James.

“So.” She crossed her arms on the roof and put her chin on them. “How soon can you take us out in it?”

“God!” He scratched the back of his neck. “Not for ages. There’s the upholstery as well. And I’ve got some parts coming in mid-December. But.” He shrugged.

“Do I have to be careful about the car? I mean is it a weird metaphor? I’m not judging, I’ve got a bucket list and a metaphorical cat.”

“My therapist thinks it’s a weird metaphor,” James admitted. “But I mean what does she know, it’s a car, it’s not – it’s a car. Steve probably thinks it’s a weird metaphor.”

“I think nothing about the car that you don’t tell me to think,” said Steve.

“That’s comforting. I wish you’d apply the principle to a few other areas of our life, but it’s comforting.” They were standing very close, almost touching, and each of them was looking at the other as if the other had hung the moon for him alone. It made Natasha smile. The garage was cold and bright and smelt of oil and metal and concrete; she was tired and pleasantly sore, wearing yesterday’s clothes… The last twenty-four hours– the metaphorical cat, the booze, the sex, the crying fit in the bathroom – tumbled about in her head as she looked at them now, drinking it in. She’d made her choice, and James had given her his bucket list the way she’d given them hers. If Steve had one he didn’t know it – it was probably art school, come to think of it – she would find out, eventually, because sooner or later he would show her. _There’s not a checklist, or a fucking exam, or any kind of a time limit_.

This was it.

“I told Nick Natalie Rushman was a cover,” she said suddenly.

They both looked over at her, surprised, moving in tandem – it was sort of pretty. Natasha shrugged, smile all twisted up.

Then Steve said, “Who the hell’s Natalie Rushman?”

She burst out laughing. “It’s the name I took the job under. The name on my apartment lease?”

“Oh, that!” He made a gesture, impatient, dismissive.

“D’you need help with something?” James asked. “About Fury, or…?”

Natasha dropped her forehead onto her crossed arms, laughing. “No,” she said when she looked up again. “No, I don’t.” She sighed. “I love you, that’s all. I love you.” She might not ever stop smiling about it. Idiotic, except that it made her boys so happy. And herself as well.

 

*********

*********

*********

 

On her birthday she got a text saying _come over when you’re off work_ from Steve and frowned at it suspiciously. She hadn’t told them it was her birthday, but she supposed it was in her file or something. Cake? If there was cake much might be forgiven, although she couldn’t remember offhand if anything had happened lately that needed forgiving, which probably meant it hadn’t. Possibly her screwed-up sleep schedule, but that was on her. She was a responsible adult with a job and an alarm clock and a bed which could technically be boyfriend-free whenever she said the word. Lack of impulse control led to less sleep led to bad decision-making and lack of impulse control. (Well, and orgasms.) It had only been three weeks, but Natasha had already discovered a surprising number of things about herself she had never suspected before, the chief of which was that she was incredibly and pathetically tactile. And being tactile had a way of… leading to things.

Upon reaching their street she had an impulse to run across the road and climb James like a tree when she saw him waiting for her outside the front door, so she did.

“Hi, gorgeous,” he said breathlessly. He had called her every endearment under the sun – well, the not-embarrassing ones – in the last three weeks, usually while in bed, and now they made her go all dreamy. It was awful. She and Steve had compared notes once and agreed it was ridiculous and that neither of them could work out why they liked it so much, but like it they both did.

“Hi,” said Natasha from two inches away. Their noses bumped; he tilted his head and kissed her again, lovely and thorough. She’d be worried about the rumours but Steve had an aversion to PDA, it was a phobia or something, most people probably thought he was the third wheel. Most people were assholes. And Steve was as tactile as Nat herself when they were in private.

“So?” Natasha said at last.

“Happy birthday,” said James.

She laughed. “It’s my emo invented birthday.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. We’re throwing you a party.”

Natasha went still. “At the weekend?”

“Right now. It’s a not-surprise party because it’s supposed to be a surprise party, but none of us are gonna react well to the whole lights off jumping out from behind the couch thing they do on the TV, so I’m telling you about the surprise party.”

“That’s inside right now.”

“It is.”

She chewed her bottom lip. He was still holding her off her feet without any sign of strain, her arms looped around his shoulders.

“What if…”

“If you really don’t want it we’ll go to your place,” he said instantly. “But the idea of the not-really-surprise party was that you couldn’t run away from it just on principle.”

“I don’t do that.” She sort of did. “Much.”

James kissed her again. He wasn’t trying to be persuasive, but it had the right effect.

“Who’s here?”

“Everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“Pretty much. Miss Potts has assured me Howard’s asshole kid is on a leash and Nick Fury keeps looking at me like I’m Angel Clare and I’ve just ravished and ruined his precious little girl” – Natasha laughed so much he had to put her down – “so it oughta be fun, you know.”

She thought about it. Then she said, “Yeah. All right, Soldier. Lay on, Macduff.”

“I knew I could trust you to get that right,” James said. They headed inside in silence, and in the elevator Natasha stepped close to him and snuggled, his arms tight around her waist. Steve was waiting in the hallway: “Thank god you didn’t bail – mmf!” and kissed her enthusiastically back; she stood on tiptoes to meet him and cupped his face in her hands. He’d shaved recently, and he was wearing the Old Spice she’d bought him, because he was a walking cliché and she liked the smell, his left arm tight around her waist, the other hand in her hair.

“Am I mussed?” she demanded when he drew back.

“A little,” said Steve, not in the least apologetic.

“A little, is that all?” Natasha objected as they bundled her through the door.

“Surprise!” said Bobbi, toasting her with a beer glass and grinning. Clint beside her – Banner even! “Happy birthday, Agent Romanov,” he said, and Natasha kissed his cheek and said, “Natasha, for god’s sake, you’re at my birthday party,” – Maria, wearing heels, would wonders never cease, and Pepper, who seized hold of her to promise that Tony was on his very best behaviour, no excuses and no suits, and she looked lovely, such a great haircut. How was the bookshop?

“The bookshop’s great,” said Natasha, pulling a face at Nick, who glowered. “Good of you to come,” she said blandly.

“I figured you’d need back-up,” he said.

“I have back-up,” said Natasha. “You’re supposed to say: happy birthday Nat, I like your haircut.”

“It’s the same one you had the last time I saw you,” said Nick.

“Nobody asked you, Patrice,” said Maria and handed him another glass.

“I knew you were lying,” Nick added.

Natasha looked at him evenly. Then she smiled, faint and fond. “No you didn’t.”

He looked away. Then he said, “Happy birthday, Natasha.”

Thor was there, with Selvig and Foster and the intern, Lewis – “It is ill-luck on Asgard to wish a fellow warrior many happy returns, and I thought you’d like the mead better,” – and Rhodey was there – “I’m the leash,” he said, jerking his head at Stark, who pulled a face at Natasha and said, “Look at you Romanov, all grown-up and human, I’m so proud, you want an upgrade on those gauntlets?” – and Sam hugged her one-armed and begged an introduction to Sharon Carter, who was joking with Steve and Bobbi. “Speech?” he said.

“Hi everybody, my boyfriends are assholes,” said Natasha, laughing. “Thanks for coming, nobody touches the cake before I do. No, hell, no.”

“Spoilsport,” said Stark.

“Birthday girl,” said Natasha and put her nose in the air. She was thirty-one, and this was her very own, very first not-surprise birthday party; she would be snooty if she wanted to.

*********

Nearly midnight, and definitely time to go. Everyone was leaving in twos and threes, except for Thor who had a bigger entourage than Tony, which Tony thought was sort of uncalled for given that this was Tony’s home town and not Thor’s. Cap was enthroned on the arm of the leather armchair nearest the door where he could say goodbye to people and give them directions as they staggered out; Romanov stood next to him, their knees touching, laughing down at him. Tony thought she had a look on her face that resembled the way Pepper looked at him, and while he was – by his standards – by no means drunk, it nevertheless took him a few minutes to put that together. Romanov wasn’t human and Cap, surely, was supposed to stay endlessly loyal to his lost love for the rest of his sad supersoldier days, but here they were, flirting it up with no consideration whatsoever for other people’s assumptions. Tony shook his head. Kids these days.

He was busy emptying the very last of the rioja into his glass when Barnes wandered over to Romanov and Cap; she didn’t turn her head but Cap’s smile got, if possible, even wider, and Barnes wrapped both arms around Romanov’s shoulders from behind, her back against his chest. Tony blinked. There was a blond, brunet and redhead joke in there somewhere he wasn’t drunk enough to make. Even from across the room you’d have to be an idiot to mistake what was going on. Romanov’s hands, oddly small-looking when out of those terrifying gauntlets, wrapped around Barnes’ forearm, her eyes still on Cap. Barnes’ head was tilted so that Tony couldn’t see his face, but Tony would bet his Bugatti that Barnes was looking at Cap and Romanov as if they’d hung the moon for him and him alone.

Took one to know one.

“Huh,” said Tony. “I guess she wasn’t kidding about the boyfriendsssssss.” He drew the ‘s’ into a long hiss.

“Nope,” said Rhodey.

“I think that’s why Fury’s so grouchy,” said Pepper.

“Nick Fury doesn’t approve of Captain America as a boyfriend,” said Tony, delighted. “Ah me. What a time to be alive. Man,” he added pensively, “I wish I could put this on Twitter.”

Rhodey and Pepper looked at each other in horror and reached, simultaneously, for the jacket pocket in which he carried his phone.


End file.
